The refrain returns, a bleak singalong. “Life is fairly low-cost, it’s offered a decade at a time/Life is fairly low-cost, it’s really easy to seek out.” It’s an virtually childlike slant rhyme, almost meaningless. Or is it? On its face, what Free says is that the world accommodates 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 filled with dummies marching towards loss of life. The music, with a meaty bassline that feels about as delicate as Cro-Magnon man beating his massive Stone Age head towards a cave wall, feels dialed up for optimum repulsion.
The sister track of “Life Is Low-cost” is “Residing for the Melancholy,” additionally sung by Shatter. It’s Flipper’s quickest track, their most retrograde punk, their most overtly contemptuous, and thus the least attention-grabbing. “Who wants a cancerous boring finish/When you possibly can die from distress and following the pattern?” In comparison with Free’s imprecise and bleak pronouncements, Shatter’s complaints sound trite. However in addition they sound like a reduction. You probably have a particular grievance, 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 reasonably wholesome factor. But when, like Free, your grievance 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?” Should 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, all people begin on the similar time. Prepared?” Had been they…not going to do 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 track, “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 assessment, 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 celebration 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 celebration on the finish of the world. Shatter does finally type some sentences, although they’re pretty base. “Intercourse bomb child, yeah! Intercourse bomb mama, yeah!” It’s a silly track, raunchy and loud, lengthy and louche. In a approach, it’s an anti-song. Who listens to what I say? You’ll be able to keep away from worrying about that query in case you’re not saying something within the first place.
