This
cassette was released on CD-R as well, only the 6 years were cut back to 3, as
this is a sort of greatest hits collection for Slade and the Big Nothing. What
begins with a voice mail takes us on an interesting journey, which flows fairly
well for a collection of songs that may or may not be trying to present
themselves as a fluid album.
There
are two sides to this cassette, in terms of what it offers up, and the first is
musically. It is somewhere between punk
and Ted Leo, as the primary sounds come from vocals and an electric
guitar. The tones are generally darker
in some aspects as well, and it brings out Daniel Johnston at times. What I most think of this as being though is
a cross between Violent Femmes and B-52s and that’s a pretty good place to be.
One
of the solid differences between Slade and those bands though is that he never
hesitates in dropping the f-bomb, which brings us to our second aspect we need
to discuss: the lyrics. On one song,
near the end, he actually borrows a line from Kimya Dawson, but right
afterwards does admit that he stole it, so we’ll let it slide. Other song topics range from 9/11 being a
conspiracy (sigh) to “Almost 13” being about not wanting to grow up and
referencing Pokemon quite a bit.
On
a side note: despite what the lyric
might imply, there never comes a time when you have to say goodbye to action
figures!
Other
topics include people thinking he is gay and just girl troubles in general, but
yeah, it’s somewhat as you would expect it to be based upon, you know, anyone
who has ever listened to any song lyrics ever, though Slade might just be a
little bit more blunt than others in his delivery.
So
overall, this is solid both musically and lyrically and that’s all you could
really ask for in a cassette. The fact
that it does have a d.i.y. home recorded feel to it makes the appearance of the
cassette that much better.
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