Review: Jonathan Coulton’s “Where Tradition Meets Tomorrow”
If you haven’t heard Jonathan Coulton’s “Baby Got Back” cover, stop reading this review right now. Go to his site, download it, and play it. If that doesn’t convince you that you want to know more about what he’s done, I’m probably not going to do much better in this review.
I’ve heard Coulton’s work described as “geek rock”. That might be the best description. It’s a soft, melodic, rock sound with great vocals. The songs on this album are about “geeky” topics like mad scientists and Mandelbrot sets. While music about these topics might sound like something that will never rise above the level of a “curiosity”, Coulton’s songwriting, instrumentals, and vocals combine to create a sound that is just plain catchy. You’ll find yourself wanting to sing them not long after you stop listening. At least, that’s what happens to me and at least a couple of other people I know.
Jonathan Coulton’s album “Where Tradition Meets Tomorrow” is available online through CDBaby.com for the low, low price of $7.00 plus shipping. Given that there are 5 songs on the album, that works out to a slightly-worse-than-iTunes price of about $1.40 a track. The nice thing about CDBaby.com’s site is that you can listen to a pretty lengthy clip of each song on the album before you shell out that “buck forty”. The disc you’ll get back from CDBaby is real, commercially-pressed disc with silk-screened artwork on it that is shipped inside a full-color cardboard sleeve. (You expected a jewel case for $7?! I didn’t.)
On the whole, the album reminds me a little of the writing style of They
Might Be Giants combined with the kind of catchy instrumentals and
lyrics of Barenaked Ladies. Since those happen to be two of my
favorite groups, you probably have already guessed that I really like
this album, too.
The
Future Soon" kind of sets the stage that this album is about
an evil genius (or at least someone who wants to be one). It
starts out telling us "Last week I left a note on Laura’s desk / It
said ‘I love you, signed Anonymous Friend’ / Turns out she’s smarter
than I thought she was / She knows I wrote it. Wow the whole class does,
too, and I’m all alone during ‘couple’s skate’ when she skates by with
some guy on her arm. / But I know that I’ll forget the look of pity on
her face when I’m living in my solar dome on a platform in space.
’cause it’s gonna be the future soon, I won’t always be this way, when
the things that make me weak and strange get engineered
away." The tune as a soft-pop kind of sound to it and is
extremely catchy. (One of the amusing things to me in this song is
the background "beeping" noises that sound like cash register
keys being pressed.) The instrumentals sound as good and as
professional to me as anything I’ve ever heard before. Coulton’s
vocals also seem to be up to their full potential as well. The
result is a track that I’d personally rate an 8 out of 10 (I’d give it a
9 out of 10 if the lyric "from my spacelab in space" was
something smoother like "from my workshop in space". For
some reason I find that particular line very jarring in a song that
otherwise flows beautifully.)
"Skullcrusher Mountain" is something of a
romantic ballad from the point of view of the evil genius trying to
convince a beautiful woman why she should return his affections.
The narrator tells us that "…even my henchmen think I’m
crazy. I’m not surprised that you agree. If you could find
some way to be a little bit less afraid of me you’ll see the voices that
control me from inside my head say I shouldn’t kill you…"
Again, a fun and catchy song that I have been finding myself singing a
lot lately. I’m giving it an 8 out of 10 also.
of an "anti-ballad" in that it sounds like a sappy love song
but its main point is to suggest that the person the narrator’s in love
with shouldn’t come near him because he’ll destroy them
eventually. It features some of the coolest lyrics I’ve heard in a
while. They’re much more poetic than you’d expect to find in a
song about mad scientists and evil geniuses. For example, "Do
the stars come out? Did the world spin around? Doesn’t matter that
much when you’re ten miles down. In the light that filters down into my
giant yellow eye, I can see the sails unfolding, stretching white
against the sky, and I forgive them. I forgive, and I let
go. ‘Cause I can’t do that thing anymore. I can’t be the
thing I was before. Maybe I am better off alone, because I crush
everything…" Another catchy song and one you’ll find
yourself singing later. Another 8 out of 10.
song than most on the album. That becomes evident pretty early on
when you hear the banjo mixed in with the otherwise pretty mainstream
instrumentals. It becomes more evident as you hear the song, which
tells the story of a married couple whose relationship isn’t in good
shape and decides to make a baby "from DNA" with the help of
"Dr. Martin". As the story unfolds, you’re left with the
distinct impression that the wife (Betty, of the title) has decided to
have an affair with Dr. Martin and they’re milking our hero for money
under the guise of using it to make the baby "better" than the
narrator. The instrumentals and vocals again are well-done.
I give it a 7 out of 10.
"Mandelbrot Set" is the only song that doesn’t
really work for me on this album. Perhaps it’s because the
terminology in the song goes well beyond the bounds of my own geekdom
and delves deeply into mathematics and geometry. It’s not quite as
catchy as the other songs on the album to me, I think because it just
about delivers a math lesson as part of the lyrics. Still, the
instrumentals are catchy and I’m impressed that anyone can make this
math topic sound at least slightly interesting to me. I’d give it
a 6.
Using my typical method for rating an album by
averaging the individual tracks, we get (8+8+8+7+6 = 37, 37/5 = 7.4)
about a 7.4. Since most of my objection to the album comes from a
single track, it seems unfair to nail the whole album for that one track
when I may be the only one who doesn’t care for it, so let’s give it an
8 out of 10. That means it’s a definite "must buy" as
far as I’m concerned. I can’t remember the last album I reviewed
here that got scores this consistently high.