52 Albums That Shaped My Life - #27

Primus – Frizzle Fry

(Caroline, 1990)

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As with so much of the music I love, Bill & Ted’s Bogus Journey deserves the credit for bringing Primus into my world.  A rat-tailed Les Claypool screaming and grumbling about some cat called Tommy was unlike anything I had heard, and I can remember rewinding the soundtrack cassette over and over to try and get my head round it.  The whole thing felt dirty and weird, like some sort of anti-music to my 10-year-old ears.  I don’t think I knew if I liked it or not, but it was the most intriguing song on an album I still listen to today.  And while that film’s soundtrack sent me in the direction of Primus, Primus also guided me towards Frank Zappa, Tom Waits, and Buckethead.  Their influence on my ears has been immense and undeniable, and no album has caught their attention more than Frizzle Fry.

From start to finish Frizzle Fry is the band’s most accessible album, punctuated with catchy “hits” like “John The Fisherman” and “Too Many Puppies”, yet it still displays the full Primus portfolio.  “Mr. Knowitall” and “Pudding Time” contain all the irreverence you would expect from a band that created the theme song for South Park and named a record Brown Album.  “To Defy The Laws of Tradition” and “Sathington Willoughby” play with tropes of gentlemanly white male norms with which Primus often clash.  Bassist and singer Les Claypool bumps up against imagined histories in much of his work and can be seen equally drawing inspiration from and usurping ideas of any collective past we might share.  Things get slow and strange with “Frizzle Fry” and “The Toys Go Winding Down” before Les turns brutally honest or scathingly cutting with “Spegetti Western”.  All of this is wrapped in the bass-heavy alternative punk-metal madness that made Primus so unique in 90s mainstream heavy music.

The middle stretch of this album contains a flurry of phenomenally groovy, catchy, and intriguingly odd tracks.  While “Too Many Puppies” may have to bear the blame for Korn existing, it is an insanely catchy and heavy stomper on an album that isn’t afraid to be direct.  “Mr. Knowitall” continues this approach with its pounding bassline, heavy guitar riff, and near perfect lyrics: “They call me Mr. Knowitall/I am so eloquent./Perfection is my middle name/And whatever rhymes with eloquent”.  Up next is the exquisitely judged “Frizzle Fry” which combines Les’ popping bass sound with Larry LaLonde’s squealing guitar to maximum effect, and goes on to display the unbelievable prog jamming talent of both them and Tim Alexander on drums.  “John The Fisherman”, with its downright memorable likeability, and “The Toys Go Winding Down”, imbued with foreboding and creeping oddities, round up this flow of youthful and creative genius with a reminder of the range of Primus.  They drew from all sorts of sources and allowed themselves to go in any direction they wished.      

If you don’t know Primus, trying to describe their sound is particularly tough.  It’s like Frank Zappa, The Stooges, Minutemen, and Metallica all mashed together, but delivered by a bass-wielding genius who’s simultaneously voicing all the animal characters in a twisted cartoon about what goes on when humans aren’t around.  I once said to a friend about “Too Many Puppies” that it made me want to strap a platypus to each foot and go stomping around the pit.  Sadly, I don’t think this blog post does any better a job than that one sentence does of encapsulating the bizarre and primal power of Primus.  They can worm their way into your brain almost against your will, and before long you’re hooked on the mutterings of madmen, the basslines of faux-historical figures, and the unreal world of a band who undoubtedly defy the laws of tradition. 

Oh, and I almost forgot… Primus sucks.

52 Albums That Shaped My Life - #44

Steve Von Till – If I Should Fall to the Field

(Neurot Recordings, 2002)

Buy the album here

Steve Von Till is a teacher, a father, and a musician. In listening to his second solo album, If I Should Fall to the Field, it is important to recognise his place in the world, in his family, and in his art. For his folk songs express not only his reverence for art and music, but also the concept of lineage, both cultural and familial. Von Till ponders, in his writing, in the choices of songs he covers, and in the tone and imagery he employs, how he has received these musical traditions, but also his standing in his family history, and what he may leave for coming generations. As a guitarist and vocalist of Neurosis, he has become one of the most influential artists in the hardcore, post-rock, and post-metal sub-genres, releasing more than ten crucial albums for fans of this music since 1990. However, it is in his solo work that we come to know the heart of the man, the passions that drive him, and the things he holds dear. It is a moving piece of music: a family heirloom, an ode to generations past, and an expression of nature, life, and death all found in the human body.

“To The Field” beautifully encapsulates this permanence of human life through a connection to nature and the food it provides us: “On my sustaining life,/I will be as yew, with the grain.” It's a message that Von Till seeks to convey with quiet and almost imperceptibly building instrumentation. The gentle acoustic guitar introduction is joined by his sonorous voice, before electric guitars, organ, and drums gather to burst into life with the album's most dramatic crescendo. Warmth and contemplation in his voice are replaced in this moment with an anguished, wordless wailing that feel as if carried on the changing winds mentioned in the opening of the song. It's a song that contemplates human death feeding the earth, and in that way finding eternal life. This sentiment finds its partner in “This River” where “dreams were washed out to sea”, and “blood like fuel is fed to the fire”; and a similar wordless outro carries us on waters that flow to “the edge of the earth”. In these songs human life seeps in to the earth and in to the waters, feeding nature and finding permanence and renewal. The untempered expressiveness shown in these crescendoes is rare on an album that otherwise exercises restraint, preferring to allow the simple instrumentation, rich vocals, and dark, poetic lyrics pull us in to its contemplative atmosphere.

Von Till is clearly contemplating his place in the folk tradition. For hundreds of years folk songs have been passed from generation to generation through performance, re-writing, and re-recording. The authors of many of these songs remain unknown, but respect is shown to the traditions of folk music by artists who find new ways to perform old songs, or old songs to convey new thoughts. By including a beautiful cover of Neil Young's “Running Dry” and a fiddle-heavy rendition of traditional folk song “Am I Born To Die”, he inserts himself in to a folk tradition that is simultaneously looking back for inspiration, grounding, and belonging and reaching forward to the next generation, offering them this rich history. Von Till's “Am I Born To Die” carries with it, in his tortured and strained voice, the weight of the history it has seen, and for some reason has always reminded me of “America the Beautiful”.

At its heart, the history this album presents is one of family, of belonging, and of acknowledging the sacrifices of previous generations. As such, “Hallowed Ground” and “The Harpy” are its emotional core, portraying Von Till's admiration for both nature and his forefathers. The two seem inextricable on this album, and “Hallowed Ground” is its high point. The beautiful atmospherics reach new heights on this song built around stark imagery, gently repeating acoustic strumming, and punctuating electric guitar. Von Till's deep voice is bold and portentous, filling the song with a sense of impending doom. But it is revealed that this doom is perhaps in the past:

Grandfather's hands bled for us here

Hallowed ground forever.

His admiration for his forefathers has led him to include a recording of his grandfather reading “The Harpy” that was made by his father in 1961. A poem originally written by Robert W. Service in the early twentieth century is read here with the old time, rural feel that has informed the sound of the entire album. While the backing music is almost inaudible, the coming together of three generations of Von Tills is a fitting end to an album that interacts with its traditions, both of folk music and family. The serious, contemplative music of If I Should Fall to the Field inspires a desire to connect with nature, with music history, with other generations of our families, and ultimately to Steve Von Till himself. A teacher, a father, and an incredible musician.