The first album from IDM band The Books
Following is a track listing and synopsis of each track:
- Enjoy Your Worries, You May Never Have Them Again
This is by far the busiest track on the album. It begins with a contemplative guitar line, which is soon joined by a sample of an eagle and a glitchy computer beat. Other vocals drift in and out as the beat picks up steam, rolling along until the voice of what sounds like a woman on a talk radio show appears, talking at length about a mysterious man that has been harassing her. The beat all but stops as she rambles, and eventually her pitch is pushed into chipmunk range, and then finally cut off by a blunt scream. A violin plays a short, gliding melody until it too is cut off completely as the original beat re-emerges and multiple vocal samples talk and moan simultaneously underneath it, creating a veil of white noise until the violin fights back, desperately and violently scraping to be heard. The song finally dies out as you hear an old man muttering "Rainbow, rainbow, rainbow . . . All the music is a rainbow."
- Read, Eat, Sleep
After the catharsis of the first track, Read, Eat, Sleep is slowly paced, beginning again with an acoustic guitar alone, only this time the beat that joins it sounds more like a xylophone than a laptop. You hear a man's voice slowly spelling out the track's title: R-E-A-D-E-A-T-S-L-E-E-P. Then, the samples shift to that of a spelling bee, with different men repeating pronunciations of the word "aleatoric." Finally, as the song ends, one of the men states "By digitizing thunder and traffic noises, Georgia was able to compose aleatoric music." Aleatoric: composition by use of chance. The sampled dialogue actually described the process of creating the song itself.
- All Bad Ends All
This track begins with a combination of a dancey, flapper-ish guitar tune, a beat, and an old woman say-singing "Oh, oh, oh, oh..." The song stops as vocal sample of Winston Churchill begins, proclaiming "If Europe is to be saved from infinite misery, and indeed from final doom, there must be this act of faith in the European Family." The original tune then picks back up, there is an extremely loud banging noise, and a sample of an old classical piece for about five seconds, until the entire song cuts off abruptly.
- Contempt
"Contempt" references the Jean-Luc Godard film of the same name. It contains a measured exchange between two men, with one asking the other the questions Brigitte Bardot asked her husband in the film: "What about my ankles, do you like them?" and "My thighs... do you think they're pretty?" The song continues slowly like this, the entire thing feeling a bit uneasy because of the two men's voices, nearly monotone and bereft of emotion.
- All Our Base Are Belong to Them
This track begins with a Space Oddity-esque countdown, which ends in a noisy guitar chord and cheering from the Zammuto family at Thanksgiving. You can hear their conversations (which include the announcement of a pregnancy) throughout the rest of the song. This is also the first of two songs on the album to feature any singing by the Books themselves.
- Thankyoubranch
This is a simple song, with a constant slap-guitar-and-beat melody running throughout. A sample near the beginning says "You... You... You... Wonderful things! Good things! A piece of dead steak!" and is soon followed by a short violin outburst. Another voice says "Find a quiet spot, perhaps a quiet room, enter it, close the door." There is then a long bridge of softly plucked, folk guitar and silence, with a cello humming quietly underneath it all. A soft sample of rain and wind and synth carry on for three minutes of near silence until the song fades out
- Motherless Bastard
Motherless Bastard opens strangely, as a small girl is looking for her mother and father, and a man tells her "You have no mother or father... They left, they went somewhere else." The girl quietly says "No, you are my Dad... Daddy?" and the man replies "Don't touch me, don't call me that in public." The song then shifts to a nice folksy guitar strum, with a cello playing along.
- Mikey Bass
The main instrument in Mikey Bass is a bass guitar played by a guy named Mikey. On the surface, this song has a very 1980's, New Wave feel to it, yet underneath it seems darker, more desperate. There are no vocal samples until the last thirty seconds of the song, when the sounds of what seems to be a man drowning finish out the song.
- Excess Straussess
- Getting the Done Job
For the first thirty seconds, this song is only a cello, playing what could be described as a nursery rhyme. After :30, an acoustic guitar and a slow, bass-filled beat enter, driving the song until, at 2:00, a quickly picked banjo and fiddle combo enter, along with the Books singing quickly; "The sounds of single people doing nothing."
- A Dead Fish Gains the Power of Observation
Probably the weakest track on the album, it is only a monotone, slightly Austrian voice saying "A dead fish gains the power of observation. Speaks the fish: Something's fishy about this dish. Why am I so still? . . . It must be that I am dead." The only real background noise is that of the bubbles of a fish tank.
- Deafkids
A disappointing end to an excellent album, Deafkids is extremely bass heavy, with multiple samples of young children’s' babbling layered on top of each other and a creepy echo effect of the children quietly singing in unison. The song (and album) then ends abruptly