Eric Copeland is the least divisive divisive musician. On some misexecuted day you hear him and think he is, for the best or worst, sui generis.
I landed among the fanatics. I said songs like “Green Burrito,” “Wolfman” and “Alien in a Garbage Dump” were lucid clangor — glass made of metal.
So, some misexecuted evening last summer, I was troubled and transfixed by his “Waco Taco Combo” LP. It ends with the 17-minute “Spangled,” an unmusical rhapsody against which the five other tracks — mostly appallingly competent — seem appallingly perverse.
“Louie Louie Louie” is like one of those other five tracks. Heterogeneous samples and inhumane timbres are dime-a-dozen. It’s the baldness, the formal reserve, that’s disconcerting.
The old Eric, something of a wacko lover boy, is not absent but exceptional — notice the guitar’s plangent fade-out riff. His diabolic mode is primary.
With his intellectual force grows a horrible indifference to pleasure in music. He is not to be trusted.
By Zech Scott
Ooey gooey roll of the dice
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