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 seek out.” It’s an virtually childlike slant rhyme, practically meaningless. Or is it? On its face, what Free says is that the world comprises many individuals, and time strikes shortly. Honest 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, an entire globe filled with dummies marching towards loss of life. The music, with a meaty bassline that feels about as refined as Cro-Magnon man beating his huge Stone Age head in opposition to a cave wall, feels dialed up for max repulsion.
The sister tune of “Life Is Low-cost” is “Residing for the Melancholy,” 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 possibly can die from distress and following the pattern?” In comparison with Free’s imprecise and bleak pronouncements, Shatter’s complaints sound trite. However additionally they sound like a aid. If in case you have a particular criticism, it’s straightforward 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 really a fairly 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 Melancholy,” there’s a revealing second when Shatter asks, “Who cares anyway? Who listens to what I say?” In case you 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 loyal 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, all people 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 might have been edited out, seems like a inform. Like they’re speeding 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, mentioned, paradoxically, that the “music is fairly dense,” with, “a lightheartedness that places most hardcore to disgrace.” It’s existential occasion 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 enjoying a frat occasion on the finish of the world. Shatter does ultimately kind 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 method, it’s an anti-song. Who listens to what I say? You possibly can keep away from worrying about that query for those who’re not saying something within the first place.