Like the Henry Cow that calved ‘em, the Art Bears are a shut up and take your medicine proposition. I don’t think you’re supposed to enjoy their hifalutin’ take on progressive rock—no, you’re supposed to listen to it because it’s good for you. Their music is high in avant garde fiber and listening to it is like downing cod liver oil—unpleasant, but elevating. A steady regimen of the Art Bears is guaranteed to make you a smarter, more well-rounded music listener. It’s sophisticated stuff for sophisticated people. Me, I don’t want to be sophisticated. I’m like the guy on the cover of Foghat’s Fool for the City. I enjoy going fishing in the sewer for the music I love.
But I suspect the monocle-wearing people of taste who love the Art Bears couldn’t even be bothered to sneer at Foghat, which is okay—they obviously have more class than I do. And the smart set have reason to love the Art Bears—gadfly guitarist/keyboardist Fred Frith is a musician’s dream, and percussionist, “composer” (songwriter is a title beneath him), and “musical theorist” (it says so right on Wikipedia!) Chris Cutter ain’t chicken feed either.
If avant-rock chamber music is your thing, there’s no gainsaying the fact that England’s Art Bears have the goods. And their music is educational too—their third and final LP, 1978’s The World as It Is Today, is less rock album than textbook on the evils of capitalism, and for all I know it’s an assigned reading at the London School of Economics. And I say “textbook” because lyrics are beneath the Art Bears—words guy Cutter insists upon the term “texts.” In short, I shouldn’t be writing a review of the Art Bears—I should be writing a doctoral thesis.
The Art Bears fall into the dreaded category of bands I respect but can’t stomach, which is to say they fall into the lowest of all categories. I’d much sooner listen to a band I don’t respect and can’t stomach, because at least it affords me the pleasure of laughing at them. Having a good chuckle at Emerson, Lake & Palmer makes me a happier person. The Art Bears don’t afford me that pleasure, and frankly I find it difficult to forgive them for it. Other than the fact that avant-cabaret vocalist Dagmar Krause occasionally chitters away like a German Yoko Ono, the Art Bears are a chuckle-free proposition.
The World as It Is Today isn’t a fun listen—its thematic concerns, which come down to a critique of capitalism as a system that pits a minority of wealth-happy exploiters against the oppressed rest of us isn’t supposed to be. The “texts” that accompany the music are bone dry agitprop, and I can’t escape the suspicion that I should be taking notes lest I fail the examination that follows the band’s lectures. But as Minor Threat proved there will always be people who enjoy being lectured to, and can even keep their eyes open while they’re taking it up the ear.
Me, when I run across an album with song titles like “The Song of Investment Capital Overseas” and “The Song of the Dignity of Labour Under Capital” I fall into a coma, unless of course we’re talking about Killdozer, whose 1994 album Uncompromising War on Art Under the Dictatorship of the Proletariat was a serious expression of songwriter Michael Gerald’s Trotskyite beliefs played for laughs. He understood that a spoonful of black humor helps the medicine go down.
Album opener “The Song of Investment Capital Overseas” has a Brechtian feel to it, and has Krause singing ironically from the point of view of the oppressors while the music goes from quiet to increasingly noisy gratis Cutter’s percussion. “Truth” is all herky-jerky rhythm clank und drang, with Frith fiddling around minimalist fashion on guitar while Cutter keeps things busy and Krause goes Marlene Dietrich in a desert arid fashion.
“Freedom” is a more exciting animal and listenable even to a plebe like yours truly. It opens with a cop from the Moody Blues’ “Nights in White Satin,” then proceeds in a slow and stately manner before devolving into wonderful chaos, with Krause ululating and screaming Mrs. John Lennon style while Cutter makes a percussive din and Frith plays fractured guitar. It’s the perfect Art Bears song for this fella—I can laugh at Frau Yoko while enjoying the noise. A miracle, in short.
On “(Armed) Peace” Krause emotes Shakespearian in a fashion I find irksome while Frith plays a repetitive riff and Cutter makes a complicated din on percussion. The resulting textures are nice, but the song itself is a crashing bore. “Civilization” is a dreary-making example of neo-classicism that proceeds at a dull crawl—Frith tosses in some ear-jarring guitar, but other than that it’s a sober and desultory affair that ends with some very fitting funeral bells.
“Democracy” is a livelier proposition—you get lots of percussion crash while Frith plays jagged progressions on piano. Its melody is anything but infectious, and Krause (as usual) annoys, but at least it bears a vague resemblance to rock. “The Song of the Martyrs” features Frith on piano and organ and is quite the dirge, that is until the tempo picks up, Krause repeats the phrase “Oh as we look out/Things seem worse than ever” and the band establishes a herky-jerky rhythm before reverting to form. The ending is mildly thrilling, what with Frith going discordant on the piano while Cutter clashes away on percussion. But for me it’s too little too late.
“Law” is a blessedly short number on which Krause—who is an acquired taste I’m sure I’ll never acquire—sings musical theater while Frith hammers away on piano and Cutter shakes up a storm. The best thing about it is I’ll never have to listen to it again. “The Song of the Monopolists,” a mid-tempo slice of Threepenny Opera on which Krause chanteuses all of the pleasure out of my life while Frith waxes dissonant on piano and Cutter bangs things around like a drunk in a hardware store. I do love the way Frith pounds away at the eighty-eights like a stodgy English Jerry Lee Lewis—he saves the song from being as coma-inducing as The Communist Manifesto.
He does the same on “The Song of the Dignity of Labor,” but he can’t drown out Krause’s singsong imitation of Mary Poppins with a frosty Teutonic accent and elevated sense of class consciousness. Finally we have “Albion Awake!”, which stands as an instrumental because Krause was so appalled by the violent “text” she refused to sing it. The text doesn’t sound all that sanguine to me—its call to sack cities is hardly what I’d call incendiary stuff. So maybe, just maybe, she’s a counter-revolutionary in disguise. She’s certainly no Rosa Luxemburg.
As for the song it’s all symphonic discord over which you get what sounds like radio noise, some heavily distorted voices and lots of scrambled noise. It all has a certain majestic appeal—it would make perfect court entry music for Mad King Ludwig of Bavaria. Both Frith and Cutter make a racket, but the song is far too stuffy for its own good. I can listen to it, but I’d just as soon it go away.
On The World as It Is Today three consummate musicians produce an abstract strain of music that leaves me as cold and bleak as a Berlin winter. It’s enlivened here and there by dissonance, but for the most part The World as It Is Today is an album for economic theoreticians and admiring musicians. I’m neither, and I walk away from it feeling bored, fatigued, and down in the mouth. It’s elitist music. But call me a proletarian—I infinitely prefer what can only be called “people’s music.” Foghat is people’s music. Killdozer, who entitled their first album Intellectuals are the Shoeshine Boys of the Ruling Elite, is people’s music. The Art Bears make the Talking Heads sound like Grand Funk.
Real bears enjoy honey, beer, cocaine, inflicting carnage on unsuspecting hikers, and dancing to the Grateful Dead. They do not enjoy the Art Bears. I know because I have friends who happen to be bears. But then again, bears are smart enough to know that enjoyment isn’t on the Art Bears’ agenda. They’re all cogitation and no celebration. They’re a band to think to, all mind and no body. You’ll never catch their cerebral likes while fishing in the sewer. Which is good, because I’d have to give up fishing.
GRADED ON A CURVE:
D+
