The refrain returns, a bleak singalong. “Life is fairly low cost, it’s offered a decade at a time/Life is fairly low cost, it’s really easy to search out.” It’s an nearly childlike slant rhyme, almost meaningless. Or is it? On its face, what Free says is that the world comprises many individuals, and time strikes rapidly. Honest sufficient. However when he sings, there’s an impact on the vocals, so it feels 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 dying. The music, with a meaty bassline that feels about as delicate as Cro-Magnon man beating his huge Stone Age head towards a cave wall, feels dialed up for max 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’ll be able to 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. When you’ve got a selected grievance, 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 another life-style. It’s truly a reasonably wholesome factor. But when, like Free, your grievance 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 similar time. Prepared?” Have been they…not going to try this? To incorporate that second from the recording periods, which very simply may 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 assessment, 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 celebration 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 celebration on the finish of the world. Shatter does finally 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 manner, it’s an anti-song. Who listens to what I say? You possibly can keep away from worrying about that query in the event you’re not saying something within the first place.
