Spose: Happy Medium

Sam

C’Mon get Happy

Reveling in Spose’s Medium for the masses

Spose will soon release a new album on a major label, Universal Republic [actually, that didn’t happen]. Happy Medium is not it. The answer to the question, “Why,” is the subject of another story.

Regardless, it comprises 12 tracks that were apparently not major label material. Or maybe they were, but there’s an idea Spose can do even better. Most likely it doesn’t matter.

If “Pop Song” and “Can’t Get There from Here” and “Into Spose” are major-label wrong, I don’t want to hear what’s major-label right.

Click Me

 

The greatness of Spose is that he’s exactly the guy who made “I’m Awesome” and so much more than that. He can revel in the ridiculous without being a clown. He’s aggressive, passive-aggressive, silly, sarcastic, dead-serious, a chameleon, staying the same shape (a smirk) internally as his outside flutters through the veneers he layers on the window through which you view him.

Or, to quote “Into Spose,” which features a magnificent guest turn on the chorus from Space Vs. Speed, “all the gangster rappers want me dead / The artsy rappers want me dead from a zombie plague.”

Ultimately, the irony of “I’m Awesome” only works if Spose, indeed, is awesome. Just imagine the ego necessary to pull this whole persona off. To self-identify as a weed smoker as tightly as a predicate nominative, to refer to yourself as Peter Sparker (you know, like the secret identity of the weed-smokin’est super hero?), to be the absolute best at self-denigration and self-slander (the remix of “I’m Awesome” here with Mac Lethal has even more verses in the same vein), and still manage to come off sounding smarter and more impressive than just about everyone else.

That kind of complete lack of self-doubt is contagious. Somehow, he’s created for himself a secret identity in plain sight.

I’ve written about the brilliance of “Pop Song” in the review of this year’s GFAC 207 disc, but it needs restating. Not only does it have two choruses of impeccable quality, one Weezer rock, the other Dr. Luke dance hit. Not only does Spose elegantly walk the fine line between pompous high-minded dick and completely sympathetic and lovable tortured-artist-type. Not only is it just a blast to listen to. But it’s also the truth.

Every fan you have that attracted the label in the first place loves you for what you are and you hear, “Spose, you’re not fucking Rick Ross / We want something more like Ke$ha, ‘Tik Tok’ … Really Spose, would it be that cataclysmic / To make a couple songs for top 40 and rhythmic?”

“If you’re not up to the task / Grab your bags / Call a cab / It’s too bad, b / Because we want you to write a pop song.”

And I just love that form of address, “b,” that he inserts, so perfectly encapsulating the exec who tells himself he “gets it,” while not having a fucking clue about the way people are exposed to music nowadays and consume it, yet it’s his exact job to know that.

But does anyone in the real world care about this shit? Does it only play to music nerds like me? Is this the “substance” he claims to need in this album’s title track? Or is it just more rapping about rapping, the empty, intellectually bankrupt crap that Spose is supposedly railing against?

Sometimes, it really doesn’t matter. The way the sultry, gal-vocal “You can’t get there from here” line [actually, it’s a guy: Sicky-1 aka Doctor Astronaut] is delivered in the midst of that song’s chorus is the perfect capper to a track that’s undeniably catchy, even if the entire substance is “look at me: I ‘made it’ from Maine. Isn’t that crazy?”

How long does the bloom last on that juxtapositional rose? You can’t play the underdog card when you’re on top. And Spose likes to remind people he’s on top on Happy Medium, that he “made it,” which I think he basically did, but I don’t think even he thinks he’s made it a quarter far enough.

And there is substance there. Get from where? “From where teenage moms and their babies dwell / Where people downgrade from cocaine to oxy pills.” Anybody see the cover of the Press Herald last week? Well, of course you didn’t. But they reported that Maine is first in painkiller addiction. And people acted like they were shocked!

Like A-Frame’s recent record, and as he’s done all along, Spose looks at the Maine underbelly and is neither surprised nor impressed by what he sees there.

People talk about Maine being poor like it’s funny. But there’s nothing funny about true poverty right under your nose. Poverty comes with violence and despair and inhumanity, and we don’t like to either talk about those things in our cities and towns or hear about them in our pop songs.

“Christmas Song” is thoughtful, too, with a narrative too hard to sum up here that’s at least half true. Just know that retired WCSH newscaster Susan Kimball does a cameo. And “Sketchball” is actually genuinely inspirational, I think, Spose reaching out to those Mainers who are going exactly nowhere: “It’s never too late to get your groove back … it is alright if you suck at life.” But most of the disc is summed up by the battle-like “In This Bitch”: “I can tell you about Israel and Palestine / But I’d rather show these sucker rappers how to rhyme.”

There’s just enough substance to make you a believer while you’re singing along to some very fun shit. Because he can definitely rhyme, influenced by and comfortable in the company of Snoop and Del and De La Soul and the Live Poets and Aesop Rock and Atmosphere. Or, as he puts it, “I’m a mix of John Steinbeck and Biggie Smalls.”

Yeah, I like that. Or a mix of Mark Twain and Grand Puba. Or…

Paranoid Social Club: Axis II

Sam

Join the Club

Paranoid, Social, and otherwise

In their secret location, on the outskirts of Portland, among blue-collar types and rotting cars, the Paranoid Social Club conspire. Though their plans hint at world domination, for the time being they’re happy with small bits of mischief making: cold-calling studio execs and management possibilities; setting up elaborate treasure hunts whereby fans can find their first recorded effort, Axis: II the Demo buried in the ground fronting the police station, behind the counter at the Treasure Chest, or behind the bar at Platinum Plus; debating whether to play a show at UMaine/Orono for $80.

“Everybody who wants to play the show raise your hand,” says Dave Gutter, ringleader. No hands go up.

There’s an interesting dynamic at work here: The three members of this rock band (prone to industrial wash and illbient snippets) want desperately to succeed with their music — but they just don’t give a fuck.

They do a promotional gig on a local radio station prior to a show to help turnout, then drunkenly storm the station’s studios later in the week. They write their multi-tracked songs to include a DJ’s live performance, but they’ve performed with at least three different guys, one of whom is now in jail. They’re on time for the interview, but when I get back to the office there’s a message I missed asking me to bring beer.

Their history as Rustic Overtones — which would have morphed into Paranoid Social Club eventually — makes Gutter, bassist Jon Roods, and drummer Marc Boisvert aware of the cold music-biz realities and the responsibilities that come with them. But that experience has also left them profoundly jaded, insular, and a little bit crazy.

Hence the theme song.

“At the Paranoid Social Club / If you didn’t make the cut, make the grade, maybe if you’re just afraid/ At the Paranoid Social Club / Open up and discuss the pain, get it off your chest, I know sometimes you feel like there’s nothing left, but you’re not alone.” Gutter’s voice is soothing, comforting, inviting, understanding, and, well, creepy. The music is a sort of post-lounge, with a bossa-nova swing tied to a Bloodhound Gang (think 3-2-1 Contact) bass line.

It’s a far cry from the Monkees’ happy-go-lucky clubhouse tune: “We’re just tryin’ to be friendly / Come and watch us sing and play / We’re the young generation / And we’ve got something to say.”

PSC are the young generation, too. Except this one is asking you to “save me from the guns and the bombs / Or the ones I thought were friends to me now we just don’t get along.” Or try the chorus from “Save Me”: “Save me from the Policeman, from Mother Nature, from the government / Can you save me from what I have become? / Can you understand?”

Disaffected by the establishment (read: the major labels that have used them up like juice boxes), PSC turn inward. With a recording set-up provided (somewhat ironically) by ArtistDirect to Poverty (whom Gutter deserves some credit for discovering) and thus to PSC, Gutter, Roods, and Boisvert put in long days — “15, 20 hours a day,” says Boisvert, and I can’t tell if he’s kidding — crafting songs on the now-ubiquitous Pro-Tools, then figuring out how to play them live.

This leads to introspective songs like “Soul Demolition,” containing the obvious Rustic reference, “We built a house then we all moved out / We burned it down.” Locked up with each other, they seem to be exploring just where it is they’ve found themselves.

“It’s like when Jon and I had just got out of high school,” says Gutter, “and we were calling up clubs every time we needed a gig. Then we’d get one and our dads would come along and take us in their mini-vans.”

Maybe that explains the youthful exuberance tied with detached irony behind “Wasted,” which is quickly becoming the drinking game of choice amongst the college crowd. As is a Paranoid Social Club writing theme, it opens simply enough with the chorus: “We all got wasted, all fucked up and wasted.” (If you’re wondering about the game, try taking a sip every time they sing the word “wasted,” and you’ll understand the challenge.) Meanwhile, DJ Shade cuts in snippets of Beastie Boys (“It’s time to buy ale”) and Eminem (“Man, you’re wasted”). It’s not too hard to envision scantily clad spring breakers with their hands in the air.

What starts out as a party anthem, however, quickly devolves into self parody. “We all got wasted on 99 bottles of booze,” sings Gutter in his best Adam Sandler impersonation, “I only danced with your friend cuz I thought she was you / We got wasted / Cuz there was nothing to do / I must of had five drinks but I thought it was two.” As will become his trademark with PSC, Gutter’s clipped delivery is an excellent mix of hip-hop precision and rock growl on most of the disc, but here his nasal whine is mocking and cajoling. It’s fun, but it’s also quite depressing.

As is much of the rest of their demo. “Headphones,” led by Roods’s sinister bass, details most of the kids you see strolling down the street, staring at their feet, cut off literally and metaphorically from the world at-large. “Evolution” references heroýs gone, like Kurt Cobain, Stevie Ray Vaughn, and John Lennon. “I always thought that when I grew up, I’d be just like you,” Gutter wails, “Just like rock ’n’ roll / Just like evolution,” as Boisvert desperately keeps time by the bell of the ride cymbal.

Like the best kind of first date, the pretty face of PSC’s layered sounds belie a deep and tortured soul worth working to discover. “You kind of have to be bitter and jaded after what we’ve done for the past 10 years,” admits Gutter. “But if we were really jaded, we wouldn’t be playing anymore. We’ve got something good going here and we’re appreciative.”

Maybe that’s why they only sell these demo discs at shows: The fans who care about the music, “who have some kind of attachment to the band,” can get their PSC fix. (“And we tell people with no money to just go download it off the Web site,” says Roods.) Or maybe it’s because they’re savvy enough to know that sound-scanning a couple hundred discs at local music stores can actually work against them in their quest for a “deal.”

It’s hard to tell with these guys. They’re paranoid.