https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PZ3BOfapvU4
The keyboard sets up a high synthetic run of 16th-notes, exact in their equal distances from each other; they strike me as the kind of sound I've seen reviews describe as "glassy", which I suppose means it's okay to pour wine on the synthesizer while it plays, but not to sing a loud, vibrato-heavy high C. An equally precise tambourine enters to match the pace, along with a slender bass line, not that different in feel from the one on "Tiny Cities Made of Ashes". Kick drums enter, tugging along human vocals: long drawn-out cries of "Yeeeeeeaaaaaah-ohhhhh". The verses play at the tension between rigid, pulsing music and a bounding enthusiasm: Tony Goddess's high, eager syncopated monotone singing joined, midway into every thought, by Keith Gendel and Shivika Asthana's roving harmonies. One of my beliefs about playlist-making is that transitions of mood should be disguised by song-to-song commonalities; here Modest Mouse's ominous beat for dancing has segued into a related ominous beat for twitching, and we've gone from one unreliable narrator (or several in a row, actually) to another -- unless you genuinely believe Goddess's chorus assertion that "Man on the telephone will never let me", and that would be easier if he ever finished the sentence.
That transition of mood, though: admittedly it's most obvious if you watch the video.
Three smiling youngsters in primary-color rain jackets cavort around a field. They carry big letters spelling some of the words in the song; they shape their own bodies to spell "Hey", "You", and "Say"; one of them briefly snuggles a dog. Each takes a turn homaging Bob Dylan by holding poster-boards saying "HEY", "HEY", "YOU", and "SAY" and revealing them one by one as the words are sung; we cut away from the band a few quick times to learn how to write "begin" and "yes" and "no" and "good" in a bunch of different languages. "Swim in a lake/ Get up and shake/ Turn up the noise/ Turn off the boys/ Give us a break": the urgings are pro-active, pro-joy, and in a mixed-gender band with male songwriters, "Turn off the boys/ give us a break" is an unexpectedly wise cause-effect pairing. Everybody joins in: you lose 3-1 even if you object, and I'm not really thinking you ought to.
The video for Papas Fritas' "After All" -- a perky, bounding guitar-rock song with nothing even remotely sinister under its group harmonies and surprisingly fiery guitar solos -- should make the case even clearer. The band's name, "French fries" in Spanish, is an intentional homonym for "Pop has freed us" in English, and their first two albums may be as flat-out adorable as any music in my collection. The songs are for encouragement and healing; the energy levels are high; none of the singers are expert, but all of the melodies beam with light even after whatever smudges the bobbled 3-person handoffs might produce.
It's not a good use of time to wonder why a given band didn't become famous -- *most* bands never become famous. But Goddess (his real last name) could be a handsome '80s superstar in that video (he'd dropped the teased hair for "Hey Hey You Say"), Gendel and Asthana are very good-looking too, the music is giddy and accessible, and it's my experience that the difference between million-seller (Sarah McLachlan, Paula Cole, Bjork, Nine Inch Nails, none of whom I am criticizing) and relative obscurity (Dar Williams, Jen Trynin, Amy X Neuburg, People from Earth) has often been the difference between model good-looks and visual ordinariness. Perhaps Gendel's huge frizzy hair isn't what we usually see in TV commercials, and I suppose the standard American ideal of feminine beauty isn't "dark-skinned Indian drummer", but these are arguments that MTV and its audience couldn't even do superficiality correctly, which is sadder than I want to contemplate.
Which leads to the counter-theory that the public wasn't ready for songs this optimistic and playful and ramshackle and fun. Hanson's "MmmBop" was a 1997 hit, but its pleasures were polished, a product of long rehearsal. Len's "Steal My Sunshine" came in 1999, and has a clearly Papas-Fritas-compatible spirit, but on re-listening is far smoother and more professionally produced than I recalled. Perhaps Papas Fritas, although competent, sound too much like music you or I could hire some friends to produce. Maybe America, as a consumer collective, doesn't *want* pop to free it.
Or maybe it's simply unfortunate that Papas Fritas and I decided that their one sinister (though still playful) song is the worthiest single on Helioself ("heal yourself") (also, "self as sun" ("self as source of warmth and light")). I still can't see where the calculation was wrong, mind you. But there were other terrific possible choices, and if those sound no more like MTV, then or now, maybe -- just maybe -- the right visuals at the right time would have fixed that.
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