The refrain returns, a bleak singalong. “Life is fairly low cost, it’s bought a decade at a time/Life is fairly low cost, it’s really easy to search out.” It’s an virtually childlike slant rhyme, practically meaningless. Or is it? On its face, what Unfastened says is that the world comprises many individuals, and time strikes shortly. Honest sufficient. However when he sings, there’s an impact on the vocals, so it seems like he’s dueting with a mechanized model of himself, an evil alien bemoaning the overarching stupidity of the human race, a complete globe filled with dummies marching towards loss of life. The music, with a meaty bassline that feels about as refined as Cro-Magnon man beating his massive Stone Age head in opposition to a cave wall, feels dialed up for optimum repulsion.
The sister track of “Life Is Low-cost” is “Residing for the Melancholy,” additionally sung by Shatter. It’s Flipper’s quickest track, their most retrograde punk, their most overtly contemptuous, and thus the least attention-grabbing. “Who wants a cancerous boring finish/When you may die from distress and following the development?” In comparison with Unfastened’s obscure and bleak pronouncements, Shatter’s complaints sound trite. However additionally they sound like a reduction. When you have a selected grievance, it’s simple to attempt to treatment it. Shatter is a typical younger punk, sickened by consumerism. Being in Flipper, singing about it, he’s working to manifest another way of life. It’s truly a reasonably wholesome factor. But when, like Unfastened, your grievance is the unknowability of life itself, you’re in a bit extra of a pickle.
Regardless of the hamfistedness of most of “Residing for the Melancholy,” there’s a revealing second when Shatter asks, “Who cares anyway? Who listens to what I say?” For those who take his self-doubt at his phrase, as I do, it’s a tragic factor to say as a lead singer of a band with a loyal viewers.
There are spots like this strewn all through the album, the diffidence at their core. “Nothing,” for instance, begins with shrill, piercing suggestions earlier than Unfastened counts everybody in. “Okay, one…” after which he interrupts himself. “Wait, all people begin on the similar time. Prepared?” Have been they…not going to try this? To incorporate that second from the recording classes, which very simply may have been edited out, looks like a inform. Like they’re dashing to guarantee you they’re amateurs whose artwork and emotions don’t matter, discounting themselves earlier than you get the possibility to.
Album ends with what is probably going Flipper’s most well-known track, “Intercourse Bomb,” an eight-minute double-saxophone assault of “Louie Louie”-like vamping. It’s the ne plus extremely of Flipper songs, with a efficiency so giddily slack that it feels engineered to be boneheaded. One early overview, by longtime critic J.D. Considine, stated, paradoxically, that the “music is fairly dense,” with, “a lightheartedness that places most hardcore to disgrace.” It’s existential occasion music. Shatter is extra an MC than a singer, letting go a wordless, scraggly yawp whereas the sax goes shrill and the band kilos away prefer it’s enjoying a frat occasion on the finish of the world. Shatter does ultimately type some sentences, although they’re pretty base. “Intercourse bomb child, yeah! Intercourse bomb mama, yeah!” It’s a silly track, raunchy and loud, lengthy and louche. In a method, it’s an anti-song. Who listens to what I say? You’ll be able to keep away from worrying about that query if you happen to’re not saying something within the first place.
