[$5 // Edition of 50 // https://shangorillarecords.bandcamp.com/album/guide-to-bizarre-behavior-vol-3]
Have you ever been listening to music on your laptop before- on a CD- and something you've opened in a website starts playing? It used to happen to me a lot because I used to have Photobucket for free but now since I pay for Photobucket I don't get as many advertisements, though I did get a video ad the other day when I cleaned out my spam folder on Yahoo mail and it scared the piss out of me. Well, if you're ever listening to something like The Beatles and then have a window open in Google Chrome and start playing something else, it might actually sound cool. It's not what they call a "mashup" but there must be a term for it, right? To play two songs at the same time and somehow have it sound good.
Well, Guide To Bizarre Behavior has those layers of sounds where it feels like each song is in itself a series of songs. It's not just that the sounds can go side by side- from an acoustic guitar strum to electric guitar note riffs- but they really feel like they're placed on top of one another. Perhaps GTBB made a few different CDs of the same length and simply put them together somehow? I don't know, but I can definitely dig what is going on in here.
From an old western stroll to synth lasers there is humming and harp strums. There are vocals added in and then it picks up to become a sort of pop rock. There are cymbal crashes and clanking in the background and that's all just on the first song. It has trippy moments, acoustic blasts and at times can remind me of Flaming Lips but there are few other points of comparison here because it's just far too complex.
I wonder if I ran this through Audacity and tried to take out the vocals if it would take out other layers as well and then I could see it as some band layered on top of some other band. But I don't know if that'd work or be the case and I don't want to know because as robust as these songs are I feel like they were mostly all played at the same time and not actually layered the way that they sound like they could be.
And then we get into the lyrics. There is a song about an underground astronaut called "Dinaldi Chamber" which is quite fun. I enjoy the lines- as sung by two different people, one on each line- "With your stupid cars and fetid road / I wish they would all finally implode". It goes onto a part about Auto-Zone which I can really relate to because this great Mexican restaurant within walking distance of us got forced out of their space because they wanted to move an auto parts store down the street. It already had a home- it just wanted the home of someone else. Bastards.
On "Virtual Girlfriend" he sings about how she's his virtual girlfriend and she' virtually flawless except she doesn't have a head, so there's also that. It makes for an interesting visual I could see as a movie or television series one day. Heck, even if they wanted to make a sweet, sweet music video for it I'd be on board.
From the music to the lyrics, this one just resonates with me from the start and the more times I listen to it the more I find myself loving it. I'm not sure how GTBB does it, but this is a definite candidate for Album of the Year no matter who you are (And I don't even do year end awards!) but I really believe it will be around for much longer than that.
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