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Musician Elfman in a PR photo for his solo album
Photo:
Melisa McGregor
Album of the week:
Album cover of "Big Mess"
Danny Elfman supposedly wrote the cover story of the long-running TV hit "The Simpsons" in one day, but he took over 30 years to write his debut album. But it is now a full 75 minutes long and a chunk of contemporary music that is as fascinating as it is unruly: "What's this !?", one would like to exclaim in amazement in view of this big mess, this "Big Mess", like Elfman himself once did in the role of Jack Skellington in Tim Burton's The Nightmare Before Christmas. No wonder that the musician says "Sorry" several times in the first song of his late solo. In addition, guitars and drums thunder to the swelling, buzzing orchestral sounds of a daring nightmare operetta.
Elfman does not apologize for the crazy, overblown, rockist anachronism of his music, but sarcastically for the fact that he is still alive - not suffocated by a toxic enemy with eyes that are "empty, dark and cold". In view of the lockdown year in which Elfman let his album monster run free, the coronavirus, stylized as a villain, may be meant here, but it is probably mainly about Trump: Another horror ghost whose spell is only gradually being lifted . A few songs later, in the ominously simmering »Serious Ground«, it becomes clearer: »And when you blink your eyes / You find the world has changed / And the crazy old fuck that was waving his arms / Is now running the circus, with an army of clowns «.
America is this “Big Mess” in which Elfman found himself last year - and decided to musically depict what it feels like to live in a country that seems to be torn apart by hatred, racism, ignorance and corruption. How do you get out of there? Is there a chance of a cure? "Why do I live in hell?" Asks the song protagonist despondently in "True". Is there a way out for this phantom of political rock opera? No spoilers, just this much: Even wearing behind apparently hopeful titles like "Better Times" or "Get Over It" shouldn't be too optimistic.
Danny Elfman knows his way around cinematographic, bombastic, often detailed, playful arrangements. He's been doing practically nothing else since the late 1980s, since friend and companion Tim Burton asked him to compose the score for his debut "Peewee's Big Adventure" - and then for all of his subsequent films as well. Elfman, who actually never intended to become a musician, was a halfway successful New Wave musician with his band Oingo Boingo, which had emerged from an experimental theater project by his brother. The band's hits include burlesque, hectic songs like "Weird Science" and "Dead Man's Party", in which Elfman already showed a tendency to ironic commentary on political and social events.
But then Elfman became one of the most successful and popular soundtrack composers of recent times. In addition to “Batman” or “Beetlejuice”, his work also includes works for “Desperate Housewives”, “Fifty Shades of Gray” and of course “The Simpsons”. He got a Grammy, two Emmys and four Oscar nominations. And at the age of 68, released a rock album again. Because the time seemed right. And Elfman only sat around at home in the home studio during the pandemic, with a keyboard, his voice and a guitar. Other musicians later joined them, including the guitarist and drummer of the live bands of Nine Inch Nails and Guns N'Roses, as well as dub trio bassist Stu Brooks.
This muscular line-up, which was planned for a best-of performance at the Coachella Festival, which then burst, explains why "Big Mess" sometimes sounds like you got lost on an album by Marilyn Manson with the London Symphony Orchestra.
Elfman's singing is reminiscent of David Bowie or Scott Walker in quieter moments ("Dance With The Lemurs").
But also as a metal shouter in crashing, slouching tracks like "Devil Take Away" he cuts a very passable figure.
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Danny Elfman
Big Mess
Label: Anti / Indigo
Label: Anti / Indigo
approx € 16.33
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The whole chaos is edible - and entertaining - thanks to the weird and morbid humor that runs through Elfman's films.
Here he articulates himself most beautifully in the song "Life In The Time of Covid", which starts with nervous strings and then explodes into guitar noise.
In the text Elfman articulates the creeping emotional decline in times of forced social distance: "Watching the cat / bouncing off the walls, I feel like that".
You feel slightly confused, like a cat that accidentally ran into the wall, even after being shaken by this acoustic blockbuster.
That’s enough for the next 30 years.
(6.5)
Listened briefly:
Fritzi Ernst - »No Dates«
"Everyone wants to experience something, I could throw up": One could hardly describe the post-pandemic war-is-over party atmosphere that is currently filling the streets and squares with far too many people more aptly than Fritzi Ernst.
Ernst became known as half of the outrageous duo Schnipo Schranke, their solo debut with beautifully melancholic, everyday and love-weary sing-along songs, refuses to self-optimize.
Very comforting on stupid days.
(7.7)
Ryan Adams - "Big Colors"
Three black cats, or how should you understand the
Fat Cat
on the cover?
A fitting title for the planned album trilogy, the first part of which this is actually.
Because of the abuse allegations against the Americana pop star, "Big Colors" was postponed to the appropriately contrite "Wednesdays".
His pithy, imaginary soundtrack for an eighties film is not apologetic, but Adams finally sounds like colleague Bryan in "I Surrender" or "Showtime".
(7.8)
Garbage - "No Gods No Masters"
For the fact that there were supposedly a lot of cocktails called »Mind Eraser« during the sessions for this album, this seventh album by Garbage is pretty
woke
and
aware
: singer Shirley Manson is politically furious on hot topics like #MeToo, Black Lives Matter, Climate change and transgender pride.
Her band rocks a hook-heavy industrial sound as if it was still 1995. Strange but surprisingly effective brew.
(7.3)
Sleater-Kinney - "Path of Wellness"
The center didn't hold: Drummer Janet Weiss threw in the towel before the last album of the rock band Sleater-Kinney, which was immensely influential in the nineties: The then new, opulently convoluted sound of producer St. Vincent did not suit her punk Concept. Carrie Brownstein and Corin Tucker are now continuing as a duo and unceremoniously produced their elastic, surprisingly popping "Path of Wellness" themselves. They have found their center again. The bite was never gone.
(8.0)