Just a joke about "cat" and "cheetah"
Jul. 9th, 2009 03:35 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
koganbotHere's my Battle Of Mice review for the long lost Paper Thin Walls.
BATTLE OF MICE "Sleep And Dream"
from A Day Of Nights (Neurot)
Bloody Nursery Metal // Out October 31, 2006
7.0
Eris (or Discordia) brought an apple but didn't say who it was for, so Aphrodite (or Venus), who felt she deserved it, told Paris he could have whoever he wanted so he took Helen, which made Nicole jealous and therefore the Greeks had to go fight wars in whatever country the Trojans lived in. They pitched tents and sulked, and Raven-Someone said that Paris couldn't sing and he said he could but switched to guitar, causing the great Alexander to refer to the whole thing as "a battle of mice," hence the title of our story. Festivities resumed in Austin at SXSLOLxxx where a troop of Red Sparowes confronted Made Out Of Cheetah Babies, and Paris the guitar player who now called himself Josh (or Adrienne) and Raven-Someone the singer who called herself Julie (or Nicole) absolutely could not stand each other, so they fell in love, and nature taking its course, the two formed a band, with Tony formerly of Pere Ubu and Joel of Book Of Knots to round out the quartet. In their creative passion Josh (or Adrienne) and Raven-Someone (known as Nicole, or Julie) reaffirmed their initial strong dislike of each other and Tony fled the recording session, and somebody "fell" down the stairs, and Raven-Someone wouldn't perform with the Battle Of Cheetah Babies or maybe she would, since according to Adrienne once a miceling always a miceling and this had nothing to do with why she was no longer Alana. "The whole 'catfight' thing was just a joke about 'cat' and 'cheetah.' Get it? 'Cat'? 'Cheetah'? 'Catfight'?" And so they were all friends and went to Barcelona where Josh and Julie couldn't bear to be in the same room together so Josh recorded his guitar parts one day and Julie recorded her vocals on another, because the show must go on and they've been signed to another season.
The Battle Of Mice LP being one of those instances where life and art are so intertwined that to describe one is to describe the other, an account of the music itself would be superfluous (which no doubt is why it was absent from the admirable Battle Of Mice press release, which is what piqued my curiosity in the first place). But superfluity is my motto and my method, so let's get down to it: This starts with portentous planetarium atmospherics, then Julie talks in a small breathy voice that isn't so much a little girl's as one that adults use to recite bedtime stories to children. The tale gets bloody, so Josh lays down giant sheets of rough and glistening guitar, then Julie starts screaming - this is, after all, a rock band. Then she sings, then she goes back to the little-girl voice, then Josh and Tony construct great cliffs of sound and Julie's singing climbs them. This last bit is generically rather than genuinely beautiful, and the little-girl stuff that preceded it isn't as convincing/compelling as the child-like dad hate I was raving about a couple weeks ago in my Jena Kraus review. But in general this track is thrilling and chilling enough for me to understand why the participants want the saga to continue, despite everything.
--FRANK KOGAN, OCTOBER 12, 2006
BATTLE OF MICE "Sleep And Dream"
from A Day Of Nights (Neurot)
Bloody Nursery Metal // Out October 31, 2006
7.0
Eris (or Discordia) brought an apple but didn't say who it was for, so Aphrodite (or Venus), who felt she deserved it, told Paris he could have whoever he wanted so he took Helen, which made Nicole jealous and therefore the Greeks had to go fight wars in whatever country the Trojans lived in. They pitched tents and sulked, and Raven-Someone said that Paris couldn't sing and he said he could but switched to guitar, causing the great Alexander to refer to the whole thing as "a battle of mice," hence the title of our story. Festivities resumed in Austin at SXSLOLxxx where a troop of Red Sparowes confronted Made Out Of Cheetah Babies, and Paris the guitar player who now called himself Josh (or Adrienne) and Raven-Someone the singer who called herself Julie (or Nicole) absolutely could not stand each other, so they fell in love, and nature taking its course, the two formed a band, with Tony formerly of Pere Ubu and Joel of Book Of Knots to round out the quartet. In their creative passion Josh (or Adrienne) and Raven-Someone (known as Nicole, or Julie) reaffirmed their initial strong dislike of each other and Tony fled the recording session, and somebody "fell" down the stairs, and Raven-Someone wouldn't perform with the Battle Of Cheetah Babies or maybe she would, since according to Adrienne once a miceling always a miceling and this had nothing to do with why she was no longer Alana. "The whole 'catfight' thing was just a joke about 'cat' and 'cheetah.' Get it? 'Cat'? 'Cheetah'? 'Catfight'?" And so they were all friends and went to Barcelona where Josh and Julie couldn't bear to be in the same room together so Josh recorded his guitar parts one day and Julie recorded her vocals on another, because the show must go on and they've been signed to another season.
The Battle Of Mice LP being one of those instances where life and art are so intertwined that to describe one is to describe the other, an account of the music itself would be superfluous (which no doubt is why it was absent from the admirable Battle Of Mice press release, which is what piqued my curiosity in the first place). But superfluity is my motto and my method, so let's get down to it: This starts with portentous planetarium atmospherics, then Julie talks in a small breathy voice that isn't so much a little girl's as one that adults use to recite bedtime stories to children. The tale gets bloody, so Josh lays down giant sheets of rough and glistening guitar, then Julie starts screaming - this is, after all, a rock band. Then she sings, then she goes back to the little-girl voice, then Josh and Tony construct great cliffs of sound and Julie's singing climbs them. This last bit is generically rather than genuinely beautiful, and the little-girl stuff that preceded it isn't as convincing/compelling as the child-like dad hate I was raving about a couple weeks ago in my Jena Kraus review. But in general this track is thrilling and chilling enough for me to understand why the participants want the saga to continue, despite everything.
--FRANK KOGAN, OCTOBER 12, 2006
