I am just back from an evening of
listening to music with friends – one of my favourite things to do. Now it is
time to review the album that I listened to as I walked the last part of my
journey home – making it a musical night right up the very last!
Disc 622 is…. Lateralus
Artist: Tool
Year of Release: 2001
What’s up with the Cover? Tool always manage
to do covers that are both innovative and totally creepy. This one has a plastic black sleeve over it,
but when you take that off there is a booklet that looks like those see-through
layered anatomy pages you find in encyclopedias. Except when you flip through this one you
find weird extra items buried inside, like a vortex ending in a burning eye, a
pentagram and a pearl at the centre of four ornate handles. For Tool the human
anatomy isn’t just fascinating; its filled with eldritch horror.
How I Came To Know It: My friends Kelly and Chris told me to get this when
it came out but like a chump I ignored them for several years. When I finally
did buy it, they were proved right. If I didn’t give them credit at the time,
let me make up for the oversight and say thank you now.
How It Stacks Up: It is a close call with “Undertow” (reviewed way
back at Disc 131). I originally put “Undertow” second to “Lateralus” when
I rolled it, but there are a couple of small faults at the end of “Lateralus”
that knock it just south of 5 stars. Since I gave “Undertow” 5 stars, and I’m
not going to do that here, I’ve got to reluctantly put “Lateralus” second.
Rating: 4 stars but ever so close to 5.
When I go to house parties, I’m
known to take an ornate drinking glass with me – I call it the Goblet of Rock.
The Goblet of Rock is an ornate steel frame depicting dragons, pagodas and
naked ladies. The glass the frame holds is a deep cobalt blue. It is ridiculously
over the top, and I love it.
Or at least I did. Last night while I was unpacking my knapsack,
it slipped out of my hand and the cobalt blue glassware smashed into tiny
pieces on my kitchen floor. I was listening to this album at the time on
headphones, and the song that was playing was “Schism.” As the glass bounced unscathed
off the tile once, and then fell a second time and disintegrated, I could hear
Tool’s Maynard James Keenan singing:
“I know the pieces fit 'cause I watched them tumble down
No fault, none to blame, it doesn't mean I don't desire to
Point the finger, blame the other, watch the temple topple
over.
To bring the pieces back together, rediscover communication.”
It was a weird coincidence, but
exactly the kind of weird coincidences you almost expect when listening to the
crazy genius that is “Lateralus.” Listening to this album walking to and from
work for a couple days, I felt like I was in some kind of Lovecraftian tale of
horror. The sun was shining, but everything seemed disconnected and alien. Yet last
night walking home at two in the morning, the album felt more like a warm
blanket of sound. The dead of night is just a better conduit for the Tool
listening experience.
Wherever you listen to it, “Lateralus”
will cast its spell on you. This record is a masterpiece of musical precision,
crisp yet layered sound production and thoughtful, evocative lyrics. Like all
Tool albums, it explores the dark recesses of the human mind as it casts its
considerable imagination into what it means to be human.
Grounding it all are Danny Carey’s
drums. Carey’s drumming is always amazing, but I think he is never better than
on “Lateralus.” He lays down a web of complicated and unexpected time
signatures. My untrained ear can never figure out what they are (I’m pretty
much a 4/4 guy), but it doesn’t prevent me appreciating how they give every
song a centre that is both focused and disorienting at the same time.
And beyond being technically interesting
and intricate, these songs draw you down into a fugue state where your lizard
brain can get lost in the groove even as your frontal lobes dance nimbly on the
melody.
There are portions of this album
that drag slightly, like the echo-filled “Mantra”
or the muted “Parabol” but they are deliberately
placed to give context and emotional layering to the songs that come just before
and after. Without these little tracks, “Lateralus” would never let you up for
air.
Songs like “Schism,” “Parabola” and
the title track, “Lateralus” explore
the nature of the human experience, and what it means. Can we step outside of
ourselves? What is our condition, and is it divine, or merely self-aware? Tool
never provides easy answers to these questions, but they always encourage us to
think outside the lines, and contemplate our place in the universe.
And then there are songs like “Ticks & Leeches” where Maynard James
Keenan just gets his anger on at all those people who suck him dry. For all I
know he means the fans (he has been known to baa like a sheep at his own
audience until the start baaing back). I’d tell the band to lighten up, but
frankly I enjoy listening to them get their anger on. Maybe that’s what Maynard’s
getting at.
Like my last review for James
Brown, a lot of the songs on “Lateralus” are long (eight of the thirteen songs
are six minutes or more) but they never feel too long and although the album
clocks in at an unwieldy 78 minutes, I’m not sure what I’d cut to make it
shorter.
Well, there is one thing. Once
again, Tool decides to end a song (“Triad”)
with two minutes of dead air, and then finishes up with “Faaip de Oiad,” a panicked ‘true recording’ of some guy describing
an alien conspiracy. This just knocks this record down to four stars. Just.
1 comment:
RIP Goblet of Rock.
We hardly knew ye
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