The refrain returns, a bleak singalong. “Life is fairly low cost, it’s bought a decade at a time/Life is fairly low cost, it’s really easy to search out.” It’s an virtually childlike slant rhyme, almost meaningless. Or is it? On its face, what Free says is that the world incorporates many individuals, and time strikes rapidly. Truthful sufficient. However when he sings, there’s an impact on the vocals, so it appears like he’s dueting with a mechanized model of himself, an evil alien bemoaning the overarching stupidity of the human race, a complete globe filled with dummies marching towards dying. The music, with a meaty bassline that feels about as delicate as Cro-Magnon man beating his large Stone Age head in opposition to a cave wall, feels dialed up for optimum repulsion.
The sister tune of “Life Is Low-cost” is “Residing for the Despair,” additionally sung by Shatter. It’s Flipper’s quickest tune, their most retrograde punk, their most overtly contemptuous, and thus the least fascinating. “Who wants a cancerous boring finish/When you may die from distress and following the development?” In comparison with Free’s obscure and bleak pronouncements, Shatter’s complaints sound trite. However additionally they sound like a reduction. When you have a selected criticism, it’s simple to attempt to treatment it. Shatter is a typical younger punk, sickened by consumerism. Being in Flipper, singing about it, he’s working to manifest an alternate way of life. It’s truly a reasonably wholesome factor. But when, like Free, your criticism is the unknowability of life itself, you’re in a bit extra of a pickle.
Regardless of the hamfistedness of most of “Residing for the Despair,” there’s a revealing second when Shatter asks, “Who cares anyway? Who listens to what I say?” If you happen to take his self-doubt at his phrase, as I do, it’s a tragic factor to say as a lead singer of a band with a faithful viewers.
There are spots like this strewn all through the album, the diffidence at their core. “Nothing,” for instance, begins with shrill, piercing suggestions earlier than Free counts everybody in. “Okay, one…” after which he interrupts himself. “Wait, everyone begin on the identical time. Prepared?” Had been they…not going to do this? To incorporate that second from the recording periods, which very simply may have been edited out, seems like a inform. Like they’re dashing to guarantee you they’re amateurs whose artwork and emotions don’t matter, discounting themselves earlier than you get the possibility to.
Album ends with what is probably going Flipper’s most well-known tune, “Intercourse Bomb,” an eight-minute double-saxophone assault of “Louie Louie”-like vamping. It’s the ne plus extremely of Flipper songs, with a efficiency so giddily slack that it feels engineered to be boneheaded. One early evaluate, by longtime critic J.D. Considine, stated, paradoxically, that the “music is fairly dense,” with, “a lightheartedness that places most hardcore to disgrace.” It’s existential social gathering music. Shatter is extra an MC than a singer, letting go a wordless, scraggly yawp whereas the sax goes shrill and the band kilos away prefer it’s taking part in a frat social gathering on the finish of the world. Shatter does ultimately type some sentences, although they’re pretty base. “Intercourse bomb child, yeah! Intercourse bomb mama, yeah!” It’s a silly tune, raunchy and loud, lengthy and louche. In a approach, it’s an anti-song. Who listens to what I say? You possibly can keep away from worrying about that query should you’re not saying something within the first place.