Word: bowness
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...Kesselheim brothers have attempted humor before--both have written for the Harvard Lampoon, a semi-secret Bow Street social organization that used to occasionally publish a so-called humor magazine...
...that this student, a little more learned, with a little more experience than the others, is spraying the lucky professor with compliments and taking every opportunity to show off the perfect, practiced accent, or the memorized lines of Shakespeare, or simply just admiring the professor's choice of a bow tie? None that I have seen...
...relentless poppiness of much of the album begins to seem ironic when juxtaposed with such truly innovative, unnerving songs as the fifth track, "E-bow the Letter." This song is brimming over with lyrics; words literally spill from line to line. Stipe mesmerizingly free associates about how he can't understand "the star-thing," which seems to refer to the way young kids get fixated on their media heroes. "E-bow" has weight enough to cast the more poppy songs on the album into perspective; in the context of this song, all the various pop genres toyed with...
Themes of fantasy and insincerity are evident on other tracks as well. A frustrated, angry defensiveness underscores these songs, which, like "E-bow," are among the more successful on the album. "So Fast, So Numb" projects a convincing exasperation with a deluded second person, imploring "This is now! This is here! This is me!" "Electrolite" snidely comments on the slippery and ultimately minimal value of fame: "I'm Steve McQueen/I'm Jimmy Dean/You are the star tonight." That this refusnik sensibility might be the expression of the band's own attitude is teasingly suggested by the song's final line...
...push Stipe's vocals right up to the front of the music, with the instrumentals forming a more distant, solid layer of background noise. Stipe's style and diction has also changed somewhat from previous albums. He sports a breathy, melodic fullness, especially on the single "E-bow the Letter," which is a departure from the stylized, wavery thinness on which his career was built. Certain pronunciations also seem peculiar, even to the point of suggesting a regional accent. It's as if the listener is meant to become confused as to who is singing each successive song...