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Showing posts with label Papas Fritas. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Papas Fritas. Show all posts

Monday, May 1, 2017

#408: Papas Fritas, "Hey Hey You Say" (1997)

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.