(Alien8)
Ten years since its
original release, the sole album from Canadian three-piece The
Unicorns, Who Will Cut Our Hair When We're Gone?, still comes
across as a effortlessly quirky, ambitious and unique release. Not by
any means are they the first (or last) band to make weird, lo-fi pop
music, but I don't think there has been another album like it, and
after years of listening to it, I'm still glad to enter the strange
world they created and find new things within it when I do. When I
first saw the album, it's whimsical title and the messy cartoon
doodle that made up its cover after buying it on a recommendation, I
immediately fell for its charms.
After a few EPs
(which are definitely worth seeking out if you've enjoyed this
album), they put out their first album in 2003, on the label Alien8,
mostly known for releasing experimental music by acts including
Godspeed You! Black Emperor off-shoot Set Fire To Flames and Japanese
noise veteran Merzbow. This would be a strange home any other indie
band, but it seemed perfectly apt for The Unicorns.
The band is made up
of the two front men and songwriters, Nicholas Thorburn and Alden
Penner, joined by Jamie Thompson on drums, and fitting in with their
own strange world they all went under a revolving set of various
stage names and monikers during their time in the band. Filled with
both a balance of child-like naivety and grown-up cynicism, they
explore offbeat an often morbid themes in this album, amongst sillier
topics and stories, dealing with ghosts, ghost stories, parasitic
creatures, and bands determined to make it big.
Despite its
indie-pop leaning and upbeat guitar hooks, they avoid simple verse
chorus structures, instead constricting music that is as narratively
driven as their lyrics. These vary between the direct and
straightforward to the obscure and impenetrable, littered with witty
(but undoubtedly cheesy) puns like 'I can't stand these Jellybones'.
Through the album, they make use of a wide variety of instruments,
from toy keyboards and weird synthesizers to flutes and xylophones,
as well as a whole lot of studio trickery interspersed with the
sounds of a band just messing around and having fun (Sea Ghost starts
off with a jaunty 18-second flute solo).
The album is
bookended by songs about death, one of the recurring themes on the
album. On I Don't Wanna Die, a paranoid character lists ways in which
they could meet their fate with the fixated obsession of a
hypochondriac, whilst the album closer Ready To Die, features a
character washed up on an island in an poor state, left to
contemplate and accept his impending death (and it also features one
of my favourite endings to an album).
Tuff Ghost (One of
three songs with ghost in it's title) is about a shallow, uncaring
ghost ('I'm a strong dead man/looking out for myself') as he gets
criticized by the still living with the clever refrain, 'I can see
right through/ right through you' as the song ends with playful
synthesizers and a bass guitar almost duelling over a manic drum
beat. The two singers in the band often take up the roles of
different characters, offering different sides to the same story,
which is the approach taken on Jellybones. After an unexpected
synthesizer solo starts the song, a patient describes rushing to the
emergency ward of a hospital, the role of the doctor is taken. He
approaches him to reveal the diagnosis, 'Son, I'm afraid you've got a
full blown case of what is know as Jellybones'. The song is exemplary
of the surreal and madcap stories that are told over the album.
One of the stand
outs is Child Star, placed at the centre of the album. The star from
the title, a now washed up child actor in denial as he enters
adulthood, talks to an old fan, feeling let down by what the actor he
once idolized has now become. Detuned synthesizers that sound like
they've come from some decades old b-movie take over before the
conversation between the two characters becomes more heated. As the
song moves into its final quarter they argue 'I'm still a big big
star/No you're not' before it descends in to a perfect moment: a back
and forth of 'I hate you' over one the albums more upbeat musical
moments. Live drums kick in in double time, taking over from drum
machines that started the song, as a lively guitars and synths bouce
around, soundtracking the discord between the bickering actor and
fan.
Band anthem I Was
Born (A Unicorn) is a perfect slice of indie pop, with jangly major
key guitars and a driving drum pattern. It characterises all the
charm, humour and weird pop sensibilities in one of the most direct
and catchy tracks on the album. Tuff Luff, deals with nuclear war, as
they sing 'We're going down in smoke and flames/We're going down and
there's no one to blame' over cheery, almost-twee flutes, using their
trick of juxtaposing some of their darkest lyrical moments with
upbeat melodies, deployed on many other tracks on the album like Sea
Ghost and Los Os. Its hard to tell were they stand on the issue, with
hyperbolic rapped lyrics calling for everyone to repent, but it is
clear that the band are taking pleasure in being unashamedly silly,
especially when dealing with dark and serious issues.
The band wasn't to
last, and possibly under the stresses of touring, the band split
apart in 2004 on less that amicable terms just a year after they
released WWCOHWWG?. Since the Unicorns split, the band members
have all taken part in various projects, many short-lived, but some
on-going. Most of these guys' out puts are worth investigating, in
particular Clues self-titled album and Islands' Return To The Sea
which seem to display many of the same approaches to song writing,
though both musicians never manage to recreate the strange perfection
of that first LP.
Nicholas Thorburn
started up a new band Islands shortly after the Unicorn broke-up with
Jaime Thompson back on drums. Islands, which took the pop side of the
Unicorns into a more hi-fi direction with a bigger band and more
elaborate arrangements. They released their first album 2006, called
Return to the Sea, in which a few riffs surface from early Unicorns
tracks like in Swans (Life After Death) taking melodies from an early
song called Thunder and Lightening. They also took in some world
music and hip-hop influences (with LA-based rappers Busdriver and
Subtitle making an appearance on Where There's a will, There's a
Whalebone) into their indie-pop style. The band are still going, with
frequent line-up changes and four albums under the name. Nick also
has also kept busy with a bunch of collaborative side projects
including: Human Highway with Jim Guthrie, Mister Heavenly with Ryan
Kartner of Man Man and Joe Plummer, drummer with Modest Mouse and The
Shins (and actor Michael Cera played bass for them live), and he's
released a solo album under his own name.
Alden Penner has continued as a solo act and composed a score for
the film The Hamster Cage in 2005. He joined the band Clues, formed
by ex-Arcade Fire member Brendan Reed, and only released the one
album in 2009 before they disbanded. Most recently, he formed the
group The Hidden Words, which brought Jamie Thompson in on drums,
playing music inspired by the Bahá'í Faith.
There are plenty of
demo’s and b-sides floating about on the internet from their time
as Unicorns, check out the (not so secret) secret unicorns forum for
more of their output that has been compiled by some rather dedicated
fans. Their EPs, Unicorns Are People Too and Three Inches of Blood,
feature some very different versions of songs that would later appear
on WWCOHWWG?, often featuring drum machines for percussion and
sounding much more like bedroom recordings. They also feature some
tracks that match the brilliance of their EP such as Peach Moon and
the hectic Do the Knife Fight.
It may be the clash
of the two personality’s at the centre of the band that made it so
compelling to listen to, but also meant they couldn't stay together
forever. You can imagine the arguments in their lyrics reflect real
life tensions between the two front men. Its an album with conflict
at its centre, a constant battle between thought-out and playful,
funny and serious, weird and accessible and that might be why it has
drawn me so deeply into its peculiar world. It might seem a shame
they didn't stay together longer, but at least with Who Will Cut
Our Hair When We're Gone? they gave us an original,
self-contained world that they filled with strange characters, death,
darkness and irreverent humour. As they say on the album closer Ready
To Die, as the narrator accepts his inevitable end, things conclude.
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