Ease Down the Road vs. Disintegration

This is the best and worst of BPB lyrics in two stanzas:

a shark and a dog now you're laughing
the dog licks the shark dry in your photographing
and i lick you dry until you're laughing
my finger is in your behind

i woke up fat and almost unhappy
but the bigger the laugh the bigger the belly
and i bellow out and the whole bed it shakes
and you smile at my laugh as it rocks you awake

The worst is the puerile oral/fecal fixations. The best is the transparency of emotional expression.

There are of course other bests. Simplicity, as in "idle hands are the devil's plaything." Ambiguous metaphors and pithy neologisms, as in "a bird in my ear / was beaking away / about all the jewels / he had come across that day / jewels in the grass / where the worms used to be."

There are other worsts: bad slant rhymes and consonance ("your breast breaths" I seem to remember from one song, but I can't find it now).

Ease Down the Road, or, as I like to call it, "Master and Everyone: Episode 1," has a sweet synth and too much sex.

More importantly, about the artist: BPB's music is accessible. His apparent philosophy of sloppiness is eye-opening. Listening to him makes me want to make music, and that's why I don't blush saying he's one of the finest artists of the last hundred years.

But I need to punish him for the childish stuff. Punish him in a way that Eric was unwilling to. And after I've bent him over my knee (BPB not Eric) this album would be a good one with which to spank him.

My personal story with The Cure, meanwhile, is one of alienation: The cool hippie kids in high school listened to them, and it sounded magical but I didn't get it, and anyway my parents wanted me listening to only classical and oldies. Don't get me wrong. It's totally my own fault. I alienated myself and, as a side-effect, ended up dry humping for ten long years. I mean, this hot hippie girl took me up to her room and played The Cure for me while I lay on her bed. Not just on her bed: I lay between her legs, with my head resting on her stomach. And I lay there, motionless. After the song was over I said something like, "Hey, can I use your phone to call my parents to come pick me up? I wanna go home and play computer games on my Apple ][."

So I missed The Cure train, although it's not clear whether I'm biased for or against. Listening now, I find it inspiring. I know I gave BPB mad props just now for making me want to play music, but this Cure does also. I like the way the song finds its groove before the words start. The flange/phase/chorus effects are still a hit, although they sometimes miss; I wish the "Breakfast Club" synth was a little edgier, and so it misses a bit, but sometimes hits.

Too bad Lie Down In The Light got laid down, because it would be easier to 86 this album if Will Oldham still had another horse in the race. (It would be easier to mix a metaphor if I . . . uh . . .)

I just can't do it. I can't let the hippies beat the cowboys. Will Oldham, you just barely squeaked by. And you made SDR's unborn daughter cry. Your questionable album advances as a representative of your better material.