Is it possible to love something and to simultaneously
see the flaws it possesses? I realize this seems like a pretty open and shut
case. Plenty of people love so-bad-they’re-good movies or even talk about “hate
watching” a TV show. But I think this idea becomes a little more interesting
and open ended when you narrow it down a bit. To explain what I’m getting at: people
love movies like The Room or Troll 2 not in spite of their
incompetence, but because of it. You
don’t see anyone talking about the Star
Wars prequels as so-bad-they’re-good movies; rather, you see some people
dissecting their flaws, even if they admit they get some enjoyment out of the
movies. And I am one of those people. I see many problems with the prequels.
They possess creative decisions and stories/characters that by turns infuriate
me, baffle me, trouble me, and make me imagine how I would fix them. However, I
don’t love the prequels and I also don’t hate them. What I do is to ignore the
flaws so that I can enjoy them for what they are, for the things in them that are enjoyable.
I was talking to my wife recently about all these
ideas and it made me realize, you also
can love something while not even needing to ignore its flaws. I unironically
love the old Godzilla movies, because I know what they are, and therefore to
what standard I should hold them. Compared to other movies, they’re cheesy and
have special effects that aged horribly and stupid plots and lame and/or
irritating characters. But they’re awesome,
in and of themselves. With all of this in mind, I have to come out and say it:
I love ‘Warm Slime’ but it’s got problems. The album as a whole I love, sure—that
title track though…well, we’ll get to that in a bit. Let’s set the stage,
first. Could you help me carry these mic stands and cases of beer?
Warm
Slime was released on May 11th, 2010, coming more
than a full year after its sonic predecessor, Help. Sure, they put out Dog
Poison in the interim but that’s a different animal entirely (pun intended).
On a side note, Warm Slime isn’t that
much longer than Dog Poison yet it
does feel like a completed, satisfying LP. Just wanted to be clear about that
after my savaging of Dog Poison for
its brevity (among other things). Anyway, I’d encourage everyone to go check
out Warm Slime’s Wikipedia page, in
particular the interviews/articles listed in the References section at the
bottom. There’s a lot of fascinating background information about the recording
of this album, from the nitty gritty of how they recorded it to the general
vibe of the recording session. The TL, DR version is that the band consciously
wanted to capture the energy and force of their live shows, so they rented out
a club, day drank beer, and busted the whole thing out in one marathon 12 hour
session. No overdubs. They recruited Mike Donovan of Sic Alps to play guitar,
and recording engineer Chris Woodhouse banged a tambourine sometimes. They
recorded the title track last so that they were drunk enough and warmed up
enough to give it what it needed. Their intention with ‘Warm Slime’ was to do
their own version of classic long songs they grew up hearing, such as ‘When The
Music’s Over’ by the Doors, or more crucially, ‘Yoo Doo Right’ by Can.
Speaking of Can…
While for the most part Warm Slime continues their well-oiled garage rock/psychedelic
concoction, it’s the turning point where their krautrock influence became much
more overt. You wouldn’t have fan favorite tracks like ‘The Dream’ or ‘I Come
From The Mountain’ without ‘Warm Slime.’ Just as I’m starting to feel like Smote Reverser was the dress rehearsal
for Face Stabber, ‘Warm Slime’ is a
first attempt at doing what we have come to expect from Oh Sees albums. Unfortunately,
it also overshadows the rest of the songs on its album. Sure, we all know and
love ‘I Was Denied’, but does anybody really remember ‘Everything Went Black’,
or think it’s any kind of improvement or progression from Help? I’m not even implying that the second side of the album is
bad or weak. They’re fine songs, great
songs, even. The “I’m Dracula’s sister!” bit from the opening of ‘MT Work’ is
one of my favorite moments on any Oh Sees record. It’s just that the shorter
songs on side two pale in comparison to tracks on previous Oh Sees albums, and
tracks that are yet to come. Most of all, though, they aren’t as interesting or
memorable as the title track. And oh
buddy, that title track!
OK. Listen. I said earlier that I love ‘Warm Slime’
but that it’s got problems. Let me begin by saying I love long songs as much as
anyone. I’ll use less popular examples, because we all know and love the songs
Dwyer referenced as inspirations for ‘Warm Slime.’ At least I hope so; if you
have never gotten high and listened to ‘Yoo Doo Right’, you haven’t been living
your best life. Anyway, my favorite Frog Eyes song is ‘Bushels’, which is nine
minutes long; my favorite album by them is Paul’s
Tomb: A Triumph, which has only one track less than three minutes long, and
four that are longer than six minutes. I love the Grateful Dead and Phish,
known for long jams that frequently go on for 10, 20, in one case 50+ minutes!
So it’s not that ‘Warm Slime’ is long, that isn’t its flaw. I love the song yet
I’ve come to finally understand why it is I think it’s got problems: it doesn’t
have enough ideas or progression to justify its length. But surely, you may be
saying, other long Oh Sees songs, are also static and do the same thing for
minutes on end? To that I’d respond, do they really? Go back and pay attention, you’ll see that there’s more
development, meaningful solos, and a sense of progression, even if it is just
from point A to point B.
Often long Oh Sees songs are described as hypnotic,
whereas I would describe ‘Warm Slime’ as repetitive and intend that as a
pejorative. Sure, they start out in full flight and then around the two minute
mark they shift gears from garage rock rancor into a krautrock trance. Sure,
they get quiet halfway through the song and build it back up. But again, listen
closely to the musical development that’s going on. Petey Dammit plays the same
bass note, over and over, and it’s not hypnotic, it’s monotonous. Quite
literally, it is a monotone. Doing
this with a non-tuned instrument, like, say, a drum works fine. But when it’s a bass, or keyboard, or guitar, or I
dunno, a harp, it eventually gets
boring and tedious. If you’ve always wondered why ‘The Dream’ is such an
amazing song, and why perhaps you, also, like it more than ‘Warm Slime’, this
is why. Even setting aside that ‘The Dream’ is shorter, there’s more notes and
ideas going on there. The bass line is the anchor of everything; the guitars
dance in and out of phase with it, by turns supporting its propulsion with
staccato chords and spraying rhythmically detached noise and solo lines over
the top of it, like fireworks into the night sky. The bassline in ‘The Dream’
has more notes, has more variance in volume and how much it olds your attention
over the course of the song. It’s a heartbeat, and you don’t always notice your
own heartbeat, do you? But you know what you do notice, every time, and can’t
ignore, and what the ‘Warm Slime’ bassline has begun to make me think of? Something
that maybe at first you try to but eventually you can’t ignore, and it gets old
fast? Pencils down, any guesses? It makes me think of someone running a vacuum
cleaner.
Now, here’s what is so weird for me about writing all
of this. I still love ‘Warm Slime.’ I
still would consider it, if perhaps not one of the best Oh Sees songs, one of
the most essential. How do I reconcile this? Well, it’s like I said at the
beginning of this retrospective: you can love something while not needing to
ignore its flaws. I fully acknowledge the flaws of ‘Warm Slime’, but when I
listen to it, I don’t need to ignore the bassline, or its overall relative lack
of development and ideas. To use a non-musical example, I know that MacGruber is a comedy with flaws. But I
unashamedly love it, and in order to love it, I don’t need to ignore them. Whenever
‘Warm Slime’ begins, I get a rush of energy and excitement. Fuck yeah, I think to myself, let’s do this! There are precious few things
in my life right now that give me this feeling. I don’t want to bring my
personal life into this, I’m just trying to demonstrate, ‘Warm Slime’ is a
kickass song. Like me, it’s got flaws. But I know that my wife loves me, not
despite my flaws, not because of them, but because she loves me, full stop. She
doesn’t need to ignore my flaws to think I’m a kickass person. If a song can
make me feel like ‘Warm Slime’ does, and I can make my wife feel like how ‘Warm
Slime’ makes me feel, who needs to dwell on flaws? We should talk about them,
and hope they get better (spoiler alert: they do, Carrion Crawler/The Dream is amazing), but they don’t always,
inherently, spoil things. That’s a good place to be in.
So, yeah. Warm
Slime is great.
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