If you're long past the age when surprises mean Christmas presents and
trips to the circus, the idea of a solid rock band turning all
psyche-Waits-Cash eclectic may not appeal. Still, on Porcella,
Toronto's Deadly Snakes move in so many unexpected directions, and so well,
that you might start looking forward to the mail again. This is the kind
of album that gets you excited about the future, because you never know
what could happen next.
Porcella starts with the Man-in-Black chug and moan of "Debt
Collector," with Age of Danger's deep, gothic pipes battling blurts of sax
and barroom pianos for supremacy. The track, like many on the album, has a
certain propulsive joy, a dark celebratory feel that is completely at odds
with its lyrics. The words are threatening, the song's a minor-chord
party, the murmured "oooh-oohs" warn you off, while the fiery "House of the
Rising Sun" organ solo compels you to stay for another drink. So far, the
Deadly Snakes have not strayed far from their blues-rock roots, but with
"200 Nautical Miles" we hear the first hint of a departure. It comes in the
form of plucked violin arpeggios and vertiginous sawed strings — a
veritable chamber orchestra, and normally a very bad sign. Yet while bad
strings sweeten and sentimentalize, these add only tension. They add a
shadowy counterpoint to this inscrutable sea shanty, ricocheting off such
sardonic lines as, "I'm stealing what belongs to me/ And all the flies and
all the fleas, all laugh to me as company."
Two songs here bear the unmistakable imprint of sometime Deadly Snakes
collaborator Greg Cartwright. The Reigning Sound-ish "Sissy Blues" could
be an outtake from Too Much Guitars, its chaotic instrumental break
the very essence of blue garage sound. Later "Oh Lord, My Heart" blends
Sun and Stax and Motown in a stop-step rhythm that is as old as rock 'n'
roll itself and maybe older. Yet there is odder stuff on hand here that
has more Waits or Beefheart to it than Oblivians. "High Prices Going Down"
is an eccentric waltz, where rough blues vocals collide with a rinky-dink
xylophone beat. The junkyard percussion of "Work" is as ramshackle and
art-damaged as anything on Rain Dogs, as it slaps against
futility-underlining words like "The roof of your house is the bottom of
the sky/ But the house that you built sits in front of the one behind it/
Why
build another one?"
Most albums have core tracks — representing a band's central style — and
outliers, and it is usually the core tracks that sound the best. The
Deadly Snakes' output on Porcella is so diverse that you very nearly
can't decide what's core, and however you define it, the best track
clearly lies outside the center. That track is "Gore Veil," an acoustic,
1960s-psyche-leaning song that puts tambourine and recorder notes behind
an image-laden search for the meaning of life. "On the edge of a knife/ Is
a calm simplicity/ In the storm and the strife/ There's a moment's
clarity/ When the quivering fraility/ Now is all that's left of me." The
melody is light as air and loosely knit, buoyed at the breaks with trumpet
fanfares, yet never weighed down. Think "She's a Rainbow." Think
Donovan. Think Brian Jonestown Massacre. Do not, on any account, think
garage rock, because that is not what the Deadly Snakes are doing here.
After "Gore Veil" there is a long string of more overtly blues-rock tracks,
tinged with Stax brass on "So Young + So Cruel," laced with slide guitar on
"Let
It All Go," and touched with droning psyche on "I Heard a Voice." There's
another bout of brass-band exuberance in "By Morning I'm Gone," and a hint
of Elvis Costello's "Mystery Dance" in the beginning solo of "The
Banquet."
The CD closes with "The Bird in the Hand (Is Worthless)," linked
in feel and tempo to "Gore Veil" and perhaps hinting at why the band has
ranged so far. "Some things are cast off and some things are kept/ A pocket
of silver/ A lover's caress/ A bird in the hand is worth...less," sings
Danger, and you get the sense that wherever he's standing, whatever's
doing, there's something more interesting that's caught his eye just over
the next hill.
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