Cerberus Shoal - Chaiming the Knoblessone
(North East Indie)
This nonconformist hippie commune from Maine return from a three-year layoff with their seventh full-length. With half the band responsible for their previous outing, the 2xCD Mr. Boy Dog (i.e., the Tarpigh dudes) returning to their own warped musical sensibilities, the revolving-door lineup has settled into the same sextet that brought us Garden Fly, Drip Eye in 2001. However, as scatterbrained as the two tracks on that CD single were, they don't even begin to scratch the surface of the (non)musical juggernaut of nonsequitors, scream-of-conscious (sic) psychotic babblings and carnival-barker pseudo-philosophy that awaits those adventurous souls that are willing to give this one a try. From the indefinable title (having interviewed the band for the current issue (#33) of British music journal Ptolemaic Terrascope, I'd bet they'd say something like, "It means whatever you want it to mean, dude") to the credit for pants (on opener, "Apatrides") to the announcement that the record coincides with some event known as Estrella (apparently some federal Department of Education program to introduce migrant farm-worker students to technological advancements, although it may not have anything to do with that at all), this is unlike any previous release in the Cerberus Shoal canon. In fact, this is quite unlike anything that ANYONE has previously unleashed on an unsuspecting public.
The seven lengthy tracks (five top the 11:00 mark) of experimentally weird skronk begin with "Apatrides," which sneaks in so stealthily, it's a full minute before you realize there's someone else in the room with you. Slowly evolving into a collection of percussives, bells, chimes, woodwinds, blocks and haunting wordless vocals that sound like a Zen call to morning prayers. The collective's true colors begin to show during the middle eight (minutes, that is) whereupon the cacophonous collection of syncopated B-52s-ish vocals relate the tale of the French refugees basically wandering the oceans, unable to land (at least that's what a quick internet search revealed. But since all the sites were in French, I'm probably oversimplifying the story.) Since the band long ago tossed traditional song structures to the winds, our story comes to a screeching halt for several minutes of contemplative sound FX with woodwind and various brass accompaniments, before the disembodied (disemboweled?) voices return for some closing remarks. Next, "Mrs. Shakespear Torso" adds accordion and backwards, wordless vocals to the mix, courtesy of Erin Davidson and Colleen Kinsella. Somewhere in there, the not-especially-helpful printed lyrics remind us we are in the dreamstate, so all bets are off when trying to decipher the goings-on. Before we bump into Gulpilil and his Uncle Charley (cf. Peter Weir(d)'s The Last Wave), our confused reveries are disrupted by a Spanish guitar, which strolls in to transition us into "Sole of Foot of Man," the album's most visual track. The chanting, half spoken/half sung lyrics and funereal dirge as performed by a group of completely mad, medieval minstrels over a sleepy, Floydian, floating finale brings the opening suite to a lazy, laid back conclusion as it segues into the intermission track, "A Paranoid Home Companion," before we flip the record over for the other three-song suite on side B.
Complete with ghosts in the machine, gremlins in your speakers and sci-fi sound effects in your head, it's ultimately a silly interrogation of a 21st century HAL-like computerized voice, which quickly degenerates into a heavy-handed soapbox sermon proselytizing "why can't we all get along" philosophies and mumbo-jumbo about zeks and clim cloms and alienation (even copping The Prisoner's "I am a free man" rantings) and couching everything in some gobblydygook about some secret pamphlet entitled "If You Are Thirsty, Put Your Brain Into the Fire," whose secret message espouses "freedom through tiny spaces!" And this goes on for seven minutes, no less.
Eventually, the loonies get off the bus and we are subjected to what sounds like an ode to self-flaggelation: "Ouch: Sinti, Roma, Ziguener, The Names of Gypsy." Delivered in a monotonic stupour, it begins to dawn on me that this may just be a concept album about the industrialization and de-humanization of humanity as performed by inmates who have taken over the asylum under the direction of the Marquis De Sade (or Trent Reznor in the guise of Captain Beefheart).
Part Residents, part Firesign Theater, part metallic K.O for the Einsturzende Neubauten fanatics, and completely insane, this is the weirdest, fucked-up carnival ride you'll ever take and is not the place for the curious to start exploring the Cerberus Shoal discography (I'd personally suggest Homb). In fact, this isn't really a musical album at all, rather the soundtrack to a stage performance of a 21st century Dante's Inferno. At once jawdroppingly weird and pretentiously preachy, it's definitely not for the weak of stomach and is recommended to anyone interested in exploring the inner workings of a disturbed cult who gather together to worship the chance meetings of sewing machines and umbrellas on dissecting tables.
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