With my last review of Run Forever, I felt it important not to just rave about them - as someone writing about music for fun, it's far too easy just to write about how much you love your favorite bands (I'm looking at you, Bill), which isn't really helpful. A review should inform you about whatever it's talking about, I think, not just make clear how much the reviewer enjoys the subject. Bill.
(I feel no guilt for ripping on Sir William Doddithson the First, as he felt the need to vacate the virtual premises of the DPA blog.) Now, with that being said, TIME TO LAY ON THE PRAISE FOR THIS ALBUM.
Attention all indie rock musicians: you can stop now. Go ahead; put down your jangly guitars, pack up your glockenspiels, and stop tuning your violins. The fact of the matter is, Who Will Cut Our Hair is a tour de force; the Beethoven’s Fifth of indie rock. And all music in that genre since 2003 should be floundering in the Unicorn’s imperative of originality.
Now, before you accuse me of sensationalism, I’d like to point out that the Fifth Symphony comparison is not just to say “The Unicorns r rly rly gud.” I actually think they have a bit in common. For instance: most of the reviews of this album I’ve read have said, in so many words, that this band “abandons verse-chorus-verse structure.” They’re close, but if they were bigger musicology nerds, they’d know that the phrase they’re looking for is “through-composed,” meaning, “ relatively continuous, non-sectional, and/or non-repetitive.” This is in contrast to formal music, a category into which most modern rock fits. The Fifth is also largely through-composed, but this isn’t really the juicy part of the comparison. You see, Beethoven’s Fifth starts off minor and ends in major: the work represents a change, and is held together by reoccurring rhythmic motifs (bumbumbumBUUUUM) and the continuity of through-composition.
Has this gotten too dorky yet?
Anyway, Who Will Cut Our Hair accomplishes this idea of change in a similar way. It starts with “I Don’t Wanna Die”, and after 40 glorious minutes of exploring the theme of death (among other things), ends with “Ready To Die” (with a wonderful if cryptic reference to Biggie Smalls).
I don't mean to say that this is the greatest album ever; it just hits all the bases for what makes an album one of my favorites. It’s powerfully coherent, has a broad enough concept to spawn an album’s worth of material without being diffuse, and has catchy little riffs popping out of every nook and cranny. It’s sounds like the ‘corns literally had more poppy melodies than they knew what to do with, and just happened to perfectly arrange them into these 40 minutes on accident.
And the attitude! The band comes off kinda like cute innocent puppies playing around free of cares, but whenever you turn around and aren’t watching, they go back to smoking clove cigarettes and painstakingly orchestrating their spontaneity. In other words, they’re able to sound like they aren’t really trying, but I’ll be damned if that’s the case. The wordplay and references are too perfect. A few examples: from “Jellybones,” “Drove up in my bone caMARROW,” or, in “I Was Born a Unicorn,” “We’re the Unicorns, we’re more than horses; We’re the Unicorns and we’re people too.”
Anyway, I guess the reason I like this album so danged much is because, like most of my favorite albums, there’s more to it than just the music. There’s the mythos. There’s the band members writing gay slash fiction about themselves anonymously online. There’s figuring out how many songs on the album mention death (ten, if you’re being liberal about what constitutes “mentioning”). There’s the bizarre rap tie-ins (I could prolly write a whole paragraph about this, but I’m trying to RAP it up. Ha, get it? But yeah, basically, “Ready To Die” is both the name of the last song on Who Will Cut Our Hair and Biggie Smalls’ only non-posthumous album, and the first song on the first album of Nick Diamond’s post-Unicorns band, Islands, is subtitled “Life After Death,” which is the name of Biggie’s second, posthumous album. Whew.)
I guess what I’m getting at is that The Unicorns don’t just give you something to listen to, they give you something to obsess over. Hopefully this review is proof enough of that.
(I feel no guilt for ripping on Sir William Doddithson the First, as he felt the need to vacate the virtual premises of the DPA blog.) Now, with that being said, TIME TO LAY ON THE PRAISE FOR THIS ALBUM.
Attention all indie rock musicians: you can stop now. Go ahead; put down your jangly guitars, pack up your glockenspiels, and stop tuning your violins. The fact of the matter is, Who Will Cut Our Hair is a tour de force; the Beethoven’s Fifth of indie rock. And all music in that genre since 2003 should be floundering in the Unicorn’s imperative of originality.
Now, before you accuse me of sensationalism, I’d like to point out that the Fifth Symphony comparison is not just to say “The Unicorns r rly rly gud.” I actually think they have a bit in common. For instance: most of the reviews of this album I’ve read have said, in so many words, that this band “abandons verse-chorus-verse structure.” They’re close, but if they were bigger musicology nerds, they’d know that the phrase they’re looking for is “through-composed,” meaning, “ relatively continuous, non-sectional, and/or non-repetitive.” This is in contrast to formal music, a category into which most modern rock fits. The Fifth is also largely through-composed, but this isn’t really the juicy part of the comparison. You see, Beethoven’s Fifth starts off minor and ends in major: the work represents a change, and is held together by reoccurring rhythmic motifs (bumbumbumBUUUUM) and the continuity of through-composition.
Has this gotten too dorky yet?
Anyway, Who Will Cut Our Hair accomplishes this idea of change in a similar way. It starts with “I Don’t Wanna Die”, and after 40 glorious minutes of exploring the theme of death (among other things), ends with “Ready To Die” (with a wonderful if cryptic reference to Biggie Smalls).
I don't mean to say that this is the greatest album ever; it just hits all the bases for what makes an album one of my favorites. It’s powerfully coherent, has a broad enough concept to spawn an album’s worth of material without being diffuse, and has catchy little riffs popping out of every nook and cranny. It’s sounds like the ‘corns literally had more poppy melodies than they knew what to do with, and just happened to perfectly arrange them into these 40 minutes on accident.
And the attitude! The band comes off kinda like cute innocent puppies playing around free of cares, but whenever you turn around and aren’t watching, they go back to smoking clove cigarettes and painstakingly orchestrating their spontaneity. In other words, they’re able to sound like they aren’t really trying, but I’ll be damned if that’s the case. The wordplay and references are too perfect. A few examples: from “Jellybones,” “Drove up in my bone caMARROW,” or, in “I Was Born a Unicorn,” “We’re the Unicorns, we’re more than horses; We’re the Unicorns and we’re people too.”
Anyway, I guess the reason I like this album so danged much is because, like most of my favorite albums, there’s more to it than just the music. There’s the mythos. There’s the band members writing gay slash fiction about themselves anonymously online. There’s figuring out how many songs on the album mention death (ten, if you’re being liberal about what constitutes “mentioning”). There’s the bizarre rap tie-ins (I could prolly write a whole paragraph about this, but I’m trying to RAP it up. Ha, get it? But yeah, basically, “Ready To Die” is both the name of the last song on Who Will Cut Our Hair and Biggie Smalls’ only non-posthumous album, and the first song on the first album of Nick Diamond’s post-Unicorns band, Islands, is subtitled “Life After Death,” which is the name of Biggie’s second, posthumous album. Whew.)
I guess what I’m getting at is that The Unicorns don’t just give you something to listen to, they give you something to obsess over. Hopefully this review is proof enough of that.
Favorite Tracks: Besides all of them as one cohesive whole, "Jellybones," "I Was Born a Unicorn," "Sea Ghost."
