Word: knoxes
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...CHRIS KNOX Meat CD (Communion) The reissues just don't let up: this week, Chris Knox, who's spent the last decadeplus in his native New Zealand as half of Tall Dwarfs, the cruelest-minded, most inventive, funniest, and possibly the most interesting duo on the 80s-90s global rockscape. (Before that, Knox fronted NZ's premier punk bands, the Enemy and Toy Love.) Meat contains most of his two solo albums, Seizure and Croaker--solo records in the literal sense, since there's no backing band and no studio musicians. Instead, it's Chris Knox singing, playing his loud...
...what's it sound like?" you ask. Initially, a din: Knox is just one guy, but he can be just as aggressively distorted as any six-piece overamplified noise band. Listen again, though, and the songs get very clear: over twenty of them, almost every one with its own simple chord structure, a single, simpler, cycling rhythm, and a riff likely to burrow into the average listener's inner ear and take up permanent residence. (Chris Knox himself favors disgusting metaphors, too--check out some of his cover...
...songs are "about": love; epilepsy; only children; self-punishing wives; the New Zealand music industry; philosophy; rape; being married; getting old and losing your sex drive; and "liberal backlash angst" (a song so nasty that Knox felt compelled to write, in his liner notes, that the fictional person whose thoughts it expresses should probably kill himself). Chris Knox has something neat to say about every single one of those topics and more, and a range of vocal melodies to match. "Not Given Lightly" is one of the most sincere and moving love songs I know; I've personally seen...
...Knox's live show normally ends when he makes up, on the spot, a song from one line offered by an audience member. At the Paradise last week, he came up with "Riding on the Green Line"--the on-the-spot song sounded great, though Knox wasn't sure if "Green Line" was a means of transport or a way to get high. But that was just perishable improvisation; Meat holds five years of his best proper songs, and I can't think of a better investment, or of something we'll more likely be listening to when the rest...
...wasn't Vietnam, it wasn't Korea and Hitler was a real, definite menace," says Nelson R. Knox. "It seemed a war was going on and we were going to be a part of it. At 21, you're immortal...