Phil and the Osophers: Parallelo (album review), out August 4

A word of warning: do not listen to this album at anything but the highest volume your neighbors will allow.*

I breezed through Parallelo, the latest product of Phil and the Osophers, the first three or four times at a leisurely, medium-volume-level pace. I didn’t particularly love it. It almost annoyed me, and yet a few tracks stuck out that I found quite catchy and even interesting (“Propeller Jet” and “Extra Weight”.) I reported to a friend that it was “unevenly goodish” at first listen. Fuck me, I was wrong! Tonight, as I sat down to figure out this post, I turned it up to try and decipher those murky lyrics. I googled the last album put out by this band and came across Matthew’s post on it, and my very own comment on that post. Love when that happens – when I like something back in April and then completely forget about it by August. God, I’m bright sometimes. The turning up the volume is really what did it. Yes, this record is rough and unbalanced and much more muddy than what’s been put out by this band before.

I still maintain, as I did in April that there is a whole lot of Violent Femmes about this band. That is a very high compliment in my book. But Phil and the Osophers are no tribute band. They take a scratchy, surf sound and along with that genre’s melodic vocals and hook-laden, well-formed songs, completely un-retro them. That is the brilliant part of Parallelo. And that is also the brilliance that was the Violent Femmes and what which continues to delineate them from other Alternative bands of their time, including the Talking Heads of whom you might also hear a small echo here. Whereas the Violent Femmes’ recordings sounded as if they were recorded in clubs and in cheap studios on poor quality equipment and shoddy gear, Phil and the Osophers’ new album seems to have put the cart before the horse and made a good record and then run it through an 8-track player, sat up a recording system in the backseat of a car and given us the output.  Does it work this other way around?

Phil and the Osophers hold onto a sound, through eleven tracks, that I’ve heard from other true indie lo-fi bands like Abe Vigoda or the slightly more layered noise of Tapes ‘n Tapes. Phil and the Osophers, however, give us more to chew on. It’s certainly not formulaic. It’s without a doubt, neither an homage nor a tribute to the past, nor to lo-fi in general.  Lyrically and musically, this band has artfully crafted an album to showcase their range of talent and the song order is genius. They rev you up on the get-go and land you, oh-so-softly with “Well Being” so that you have a difficult time remembering all those boxy, hollow beats and occasional off-note vocals and you drift right off into that crash and rhythmic strum. Opening with “Uses of A Man” the band fools you into thinking that you’re uncomfortably not going to understand this thing. It’s got the most enigmatic lyrics; even with the sheet provided me I could not exactly decipher it. But I comforted myself with the thought that this trio actually does portray itself as writers and as philosophers; they describe this song as one that “deals with equal rights for all lovers.” That might just intend to confuse us.

USES OF A MAN
Leaked photo shot in the dark
on a resolve to make a change
I’ve fought that feeling for
strange markings of a coming of age
no couple, shifted and awkward
could give love a better name
no blessing lifted from the clouds
could commandeer its aim

we all owe wait forever

what are, what are the uses of a man?
am I useless to try to understand
that we are no uses of a man?

tomorrow whatever today was
will seem sawed off and ashamed
no sight worth keeping but
the evidence of every struggle we made
a receipt wrote for my soul
a receipt to delay
a receipt to do more
than completely revoke
the shame upon your name
shame upon your name
the shame of your certainty

we all owe wait forever

what are, what are the uses of a man?
am I useless to try to understand
that we are no uses of a man?

we trifle, we fail, we tire
we feign desire
not for the sake of our hearts
not for the sake of our hearts
all for the sake of remaining the same
and pasting what’s fallen apart

we all owe wait forever

what are the uses of a man?
am I useless to try to understand
that we are no uses of a man?

Unlike songs by bands mentioned above, you might have noticed how the lyrics on Parallelo often aim for your head, not your groins. Indeed, each track came to me with a sentence of explanation. The track I gave you last week, “Cheap Livin”, is, according to them “a tribute to the rich folks who lost it all.” There’s no looking back for them now. Musically, I’m not sure Phil can either. This record is put together nicely despite what I feel might be attempts to intentionally keep it rough and raw. It does not suffer for its organization and moments of accessibility. “Pineapple” is still as charming and unadorned as “Pretend Psalm” from their 2006 album, French Tickle. “Propeller Jet,” my favorite track, for it’s crazy, jaunty beat that counteracts sad and maybe even tragic lyrics, just makes no sense to me. It leaves me confused yet cheery? I like that about this band even though I begrudge them their want to cloak their words in production which is masked as the effects of being unproduced (!) and then tell me how very important those words are! But, there is much to like about this disconcerting and yet very unmistakably good project. Go buy this album.  Let it happily confuse you, xoxo

*Matthew is generally telling you to turn things UP and I rarely follow his advice, but this time he’s very much right.

special thanks to Tell All Your Friends Publicity and Management