John Rifle - Fracas Nurture
(Rabbit Surgeon)
John Rifle's Fracas Nurture album is as enigmatic as it is entrancing. The album follows a fairly conventional, well conventional for independent music, formula—that is, a Negativland-like pastiche, the ol' post-modern, let's-look-at-our-culture-through-a-fractured-lens, you know, deconstruct-our-society deal, Rifle takes innumerable (well, not innumerable, seeing that he lists his sources in the liner notes, but you get the idea that that word evokes) media sources—the news, movies, Columbine stuff, Kurt and Courtney, and such—chops them up and reassembles them into a patchwork frame.
Of course, if that was all there was to it, this album would be nothing special, just one more artistic work of media criticism. "Throw it on the pile with everything since Derrida." However, in addition to this, there are numerous meta-textual layers, references to himself, to the album, placing himself in the middle or as the catalyst of these media events, interviews with him where he is either monosyllabic or retarded and must have someone speak for him. The creation of oneself as a piece of media art is nothing new, just ask Andy Warhol or the Upright Citizens Brigade; however, it is the playfulness, the intricacy which with it is done, and the ambiguity that make this a fun album to listen to, and also one that takes some brain work.
And, of course, the bunnies. I haven't seen this many bunnies since that time Anya accidentally summoned all those ones in "Tabula Rasa," you know that episode where Willow makes everyone forget and then... I'll assume the bunnies are some sort of insignificant red herring used to throw people off the trail of meaning, either that or an experiment to see if that's what people will focus on in the album a la Malkmus's mentioning of The Smashing Pumpkins in "Range Life".
Lastly, the thing that saves this from just being another copycat album is the music. Rifle's piano pop lilts gently through the album. Not in a Ben Folds or lounge act kind of way or even in a gently lilting kind of way, but rather as a counterpart to the spoken parts. As cliché as it might sound, it is the marriage of music and patchwork recordings and meta-elements, the fact that many albums merely try only one of these ideas at once, that makes this album so good.
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