The refrain returns, a bleak singalong. “Life is fairly low cost, it’s bought a decade at a time/Life is fairly low cost, it’s really easy to search out.” It’s an virtually childlike slant rhyme, almost meaningless. Or is it? On its face, what Free says is that the world incorporates many individuals, and time strikes rapidly. Honest sufficient. However when he sings, there’s an impact on the vocals, so it appears like he’s dueting with a mechanized model of himself, an evil alien bemoaning the overarching stupidity of the human race, a complete globe stuffed with dummies marching towards demise. The music, with a meaty bassline that feels about as delicate as Cro-Magnon man beating his huge Stone Age head in opposition to a cave wall, feels dialed up for optimum repulsion.
The sister music of “Life Is Low-cost” is “Residing for the Melancholy,” additionally sung by Shatter. It’s Flipper’s quickest music, their most retrograde punk, their most overtly contemptuous, and thus the least attention-grabbing. “Who wants a cancerous boring finish/When you may die from distress and following the development?” In comparison with Free’s obscure and bleak pronouncements, Shatter’s complaints sound trite. However in addition they sound like a reduction. You probably have a particular criticism, it’s straightforward to attempt to treatment it. Shatter is a typical younger punk, sickened by consumerism. Being in Flipper, singing about it, he’s working to manifest another way of life. It’s really a fairly wholesome factor. But when, like Free, your criticism is the unknowability of life itself, you’re in a bit extra of a pickle.
Regardless of the hamfistedness of most of “Residing for the Melancholy,” there’s a revealing second when Shatter asks, “Who cares anyway? Who listens to what I say?” In case you take his self-doubt at his phrase, as I do, it’s a tragic factor to say as a lead singer of a band with a faithful viewers.
There are spots like this strewn all through the album, the diffidence at their core. “Nothing,” for instance, begins with shrill, piercing suggestions earlier than Free counts everybody in. “Okay, one…” after which he interrupts himself. “Wait, everyone begin on the similar time. Prepared?” Have been they…not going to try this? To incorporate that second from the recording periods, which very simply might have been edited out, appears like a inform. Like they’re dashing to guarantee you they’re amateurs whose artwork and emotions don’t matter, discounting themselves earlier than you get the possibility to.
Album ends with what is probably going Flipper’s most well-known music, “Intercourse Bomb,” an eight-minute double-saxophone assault of “Louie Louie”-like vamping. It’s the ne plus extremely of Flipper songs, with a efficiency so giddily slack that it feels engineered to be boneheaded. One early evaluate, by longtime critic J.D. Considine, stated, paradoxically, that the “music is fairly dense,” with, “a lightheartedness that places most hardcore to disgrace.” It’s existential occasion music. Shatter is extra an MC than a singer, letting go a wordless, scraggly yawp whereas the sax goes shrill and the band kilos away prefer it’s enjoying a frat occasion on the finish of the world. Shatter does ultimately type some sentences, although they’re pretty base. “Intercourse bomb child, yeah! Intercourse bomb mama, yeah!” It’s a silly music, raunchy and loud, lengthy and louche. In a means, it’s an anti-song. Who listens to what I say? You’ll be able to keep away from worrying about that query if you happen to’re not saying something within the first place.