When I banged my head on the door, I screamed, 'My head, my head,' and I screamed, 'Door, door,' and I didn't scream 'Mama' and I didn't scream 'God.' And I didn't prophesy a world at the End of Days where there will be no more heads and doors. Yehuda Amichai from "When I Banged My Head On The Door"
"This sounds ridiculous, almost sarcastic. But this mother is not soothing her child with false promises of butterflies and angels and good fairies. Instead she sings the hard facts of reality in such a sweet and rhythmic manner that they themselves become soothing. When you accidentally hit your head on the door and after the first moment of silent screaming and swearing you start saying, 'my head, my head, my head' many times until the very repetition, the naming on the injured part becomes a sing-song, sob-sing and the beginning of the healing process." Yehuda Amichai from "Amichai on the role of poetry"
Andy Clockwise is the slap in the face you hope your friend will give you, to knock you off that high horse you've been riding. If you've learnt to duck the blows administered by other friends John Cale, Bob Dylan, Nick Cave, John Lennon, Don Was, Leonard Cohen and Elvis Costello, this new and seasoned artist is ready to sucker punch you out of that certainty you've been dancing to. "Thanks, Andy," you may say, "I needed that."
As to where this music is coming from, you are soaking in it. Unlike scores of artists with one overriding influence, Andy teleports through times and spaces to find the landscape to set the story, and delivers a sonic blackout of sound and lyric darkening the empty dazzle to leave that little bit of light still shining near the exit. His lexicon of musical tastes includes doowap, "tainted love" new wave, cello driven pop lounge, psychedelic punk, sitar scaled phase shifted little cloudy intros, and a boatload of other stuff. If all this scares you, there's a cheap copy of the "Sugar Sugar" waiting in remainder bins near you, under "A" for Archies, to bathe you in saccharin and make the cancerous void palatable, and danceable. Andy's assault on time and musical complacency will be there when you are ready to come out of the daze and dazzle and confront that heart you once had, before the strychnine laced peyote tablet was administered to you with that "Frampton Comes Alive" double album. Prepare yourself and he will melt down that razzle dazzle of your Beck into the Beckett you avoided in Lit. 101.
Clockwise may clock you with the warmth of the music, but the lyrics will revive the pain and begin the healing started before you learned to self-administer the anesthetic of popular culture. He may correct the arrhythmia of your dissent. Hey, and it's a sometimes danceable mix, with all sorts of cool drama, and even a pretty red and green swirling candy coating full of the antidote to "chemical love" and rave culture reverie—so put on your dancing shoes, cats and kitties. By the time your sweat glands kick in, and your eyes begin to focus and face the four days of depleted fear and jitterbug stomach storms after the ecstasy of an empty night, you may be ready to face reality, go back to work, and listen to reason. Andy will be there to get your toes tapping to the drumbeat of the way things are. The acoustic guitar Clockwise plays solo in small performances says it best, with a tip of hat to Woody Guthrie, "This machine kills hipsters."
Since there's no one repeated sound on this album to write about, there are these songs to write about in the whittled down American version of Andy Clockwise double album "Classic Fm."
THE SONGS:
MR. TASTEMAKER: An opening hints at Ornette Coleman horns, and then dissolves into a double timing guitar driven rock between the eyes of the vapid "Tastemaker" who controls "the scene." A Don Cherry look alike blows the high horn beautifully over the glittering rock quarry, and deafening phase distorted attack guitar. "You were so happy when that soap opera broke that brand new idea." "But now I tell your man I got the simple antidote. Yeah, some surgery and some girls, and shit load of blow." This song pounds the Tastemaker's table, causing a plume of glitter and powered courage to cloud the air.
MELODRAMA: This excursion into singer songwriter strumming, sets the stage for a skewering of the mindless to the sound of a Buffalo Springfield arrangement, broken with Brian Eno sound effects, and horn chord elbows to the rib. "I don't want to think…" is chanted to spaced out off key improvised backing vocals, with a resolve into a sitar guitar phase shifted psychedelic reverie at the end. "The jealousy the hurt and the rage, I could not do without you…" Sweet.
UNREASONABLE: Oh, the harps of enchantment bring in the piano book keyboard and the slightly off key sound of a Nick Cave vocal performed with flawless drunken zeal, on this ballad. There are triangle bells, and a crescendo of "We always fight, and we always talk." This drunken lament parallel's an event or two in my own sad love stories. "So let's call it off for now." Andy's surprising ability to hold a note when saying "No" is followed by a brief return of the broken harp.
TAKING OVER THE WORLD: "I wrote a pop song yesterday, an ode to the world, and it was all about love. And the revolution girl, she wore dread locks, and had her brothers in her hands. She said, 'I'm taking over the world, if that's alright.'" The rhythm here is slower but reminiscent of John Lennon's "All We Are Saying." "But every dream is bubble gum, and every spirit sticks to it, but why should I care, I'm taking over the world." The mood turns gospel, and the song builds to a magnificent sand castle of a fortress of sound. "Can sing because I'm so full of shit! I'm so full of shit!" So, you guessed it, Andy isn't really seeking power. Maybe we should take a look at the punks who are more sure of themselves.
SYDNEY BOYS LAMENT: A harmonica guitar thing, straight from the folk rock songbook. "Isn't it great being young and bored, and don't you feel awesome being someone's whore. And I just hate being young and bored, but I'm just good looking in Sydney and bored." Straighter to the Bob in the song, "Talentled at being talentless and jaded leaches. Eating the words of their talentless teachers…" This is the lament of lost love and making dates with hate. Getting to the top without an edge or a point or a single original idea sucks. "I was so inspired, but now I'm just bored." It's Syd Vicious in his most articulate imitation of Robert Zimmerman.
QUARTER LIFE CRISIS: The thickly chorded piano pounds out: "All my friends are getting me down. All my friends want me to be their clown." And then come the cellos from another time and place, the rubber band slide whoopy bar guitar, and a painful slow ballad of loss, leading to a sky saw of a guitar and horn build up to: "But it might break my heart. I will be an upstart, that's what you think I am. But I follow my heart to where it leads me!" Sadly, and quietly at the end, "But we're all growing up. Oh no! Oh no! And we're all so fucked up! Oh no! Oh no!" A great big classical chime set beaten with a mallet gives this a timeless toll, and the Hammond B3 and chorus chant through the symphony of descending chords. Built like that Beatles ballad at the end of a side of Sergeant Pepper, with all the orchestral bowing and electronic gadgetry that spell the end.
WORRIED BILLS REQUIEM: Begins with the folk finger pick harbinger of a dark complication in Andy's songs. "I need to cry, but not let them see me crying. And I need to feel—feel without being in control." There are mandolins of sweet meaning, under a La La La chorus before, "I had a dream once that included some passion and some glory." "My dream had chickens and jesters…" The poetry here is image laden and full of the glory of the ironic spoken word. "My heart is dying. My heart is dying. My heart is dying." Build to a triumphant ending. La La La.
DEATH TO THE MOTHS: A rocker! "Death to the moths in my head!" Shout chorus after organ driven shout chorus, then the rap! "Welcome back to Classic Fm, I'll be talking to the wee hours of the morning… I won't offer my two cents and throw my considerable weight around, because I might be wrong. I might be wrong!…" Classic Fm.
ALL I GOT: Hey, cats and kitties, it starts in a hand clapping 5/4 sweet ass rhythm for that "special" dancing you save for the occasion. "All I've got is love!… "You may not think it's much, but baby it's all I've got." Finish with a rousing attack waltz time shout chorus from the heart.
UNDERAGE: This "Lime in the Cocoanut" beat and Stoney falsetto hooting song, exclaims its rap ramble with the admission for the "underage or those who still wanta be.… Fuck! Sorry, I just want to sell some records." Sweetly offering the elegy to days when the "underage" left home for the first time, and had all the shit come down. "You gotta smile as you kill!" is the advice here when "I moved out of my parents place. I wish I was underage." This song has a catchy goard busting beat and a darkly painted street wisdom that should be worth a listen, in case you are about head out on your very own. "Don't call my Mom!"
ALICE MAY is an infectious love song, after the love affair. "I heard you got lucky when I flew away. And I want you to know, I still love you Alice May." This is the waltz time romp through dark memories and the embers of a modern love affair. Andy emerges from his Nick Cave in this one to say his "I love you" to a real and doubtful former flame. Straight from the tainted heart.
REMEMBER ME: Simple electronics start the song, "Don't worry! Don't scurry! Don't Worry! Just leave. Please remember me." A well tilled sound garden about to bloom, with the promise of life, but not quite. Memorable.
ISSUES: The tick of the piano of a time bomb about to burst, "Not a clock. Time to stop." Lines of verse here that would stand up on the page. And the building drumbeat to the show stopping chorus, "I'm tired. I'm so wired. It's just issues, issues, issues, cause I miss you." Half talked lyric like a poet on Folkways, but the music is all rock 'n' roll. Andy has issues.
PROVING YOU WRONG: A simple electric guitar intro once employed by P.J. Harvey on "Mansized," but the feeling of the song is straight ahead rock 'n' roll doowap ballad worthy of a lounge singer on acid, "We'll be your friend or your alibi.… Watch me now, cause I'm proving you wrong." And there's a little Elvis in the voice for good measure. A high strung string thing stops the time while Andy sings, "Who's the fool? And whose pathetic?" Let's not be mean.
MONEY, POWER, SEX AND FAME: A quiet song at the piano, with the echoplex still on for the voice. This is a ballad on the grand on a drunken night after the dancing is over. "The confusion is my alter, and my steeple. But I'm alright. I'm okay. And sex and power, and money and fame spins you round, and pushes me forward. But I'm alright. I'm okay." The strings stroll in from the Phil to help this along, "A teacher man came and told me to give up, and accept what's done. He told me about realizing politics and wisdom tricks. Come in at 8:00, coming in at 8 to 1." The story of TV and worthless things, and lovers that could be stolen, but "not one of them owns a part of me." Andy's alright. "You pushed me around. I pushed you away. But I'm alright. I'm okay." Timeless.
Click on the picture below for Andy Clockwise on myspace
The EP "My Generation" by Andy Clockwise was reviewed by Billy's Bunker on March 13, 2009. That review is linked to the image below:
