Extra Life
– Dream Seeds (African Tape)
A loose dual-themed concept album dealing with
children and dreams means that this third full-length release from Brooklyn’s
art-rock provocateurs, Extra Life treads some incredibly dicey ground. The
combination of the drawn synthesizer music, Charlie Looker’s church chorister
vocal delivery and minimal heaviness sets a sort of gothic tone. The songs
switch between the marginally tender and the massively harrowing – a large
proportion of the tales centre around the death or abuse of children – which,
as you can imagine, makes for a quite horrific and uneasy ride.
The lyrical couplet “The picketer told us, ‘Don’t
kill your kid’ / In another world we didn’t but in this one we did” form “Righteous
Seed” and “Where is my wooden club? DISCIPLINE DISCIPLINE… / I’ll break your
arm boy, your mother’s not around” from “Discipline for Edwin” are as dark as
things can get and a brave decision to air on record.
Uncomfortable certainly, but an unusual and
captivating listening experience nonetheless, though often one that collides
against the general consensus of taste. If you can get beyond this, the
pervading message that the damage and wrongs that adults can do to children is an
important one. That Looker is a schoolteacher probably connects directly to
these dream seeds and likely weighs heavy on his subconscious…. someone psycho-analyse
him… he may need help…
Willsk
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