No “The”.
I mentioned the Cows in my first post, because in their song, “The Man”, they have this line:
Then he called me a fucking punk, I said “Yeah, sure boss, you bet”
It was one of those lines that obsessed me for a while. Maybe it’s just the way he said it, but it certainly also fit the topic of whether our taste in music must define us. What made the Cows punks? It’s not a term frequently associated with them. Maybe they listened to punk. So they’re one degree removed from it. And what does that make me, a listener of the Cows? A tertiary punk?
Anyway, I’m mentioning the Cows again, because I love the Cows, and I don’t care what that makes me. I adore every single one of their albums, but I’ve chosen three songs to help orient a new listener to their catalog, and hopefully pique enough interest to inspire further exploration.
“Down Below” from Cunning Stunts, 1992
“Hitting the Wall” from Peacetika, 1991
“No, I’m Not Coming Out” from Sorry in Pig Minor, 1998
The most specific descriptor I feel comfortable applying to their decade-long discography is “noise”. It’s pretty apparent, upon a minute of listening, why that is. Cows was the first band I came across whose music wouldn’t just fill your ears to bursting, it would plant itself in there and shred them apart from the inside. Each song revolves mostly around whatever rhythm they’ve come up with, invariably played at breakneck speed, and a matching bass melody. The only other structural element is a hook, in whichever instrument, always very short, hardly greater than four bars in length and four notes in range. And the rest is madness.
“Down Below” is the first song I usually recommend, because it’s the most “palatable”. The guy isn’t screaming in your ear in this one, nor is the guitar, so that’s good. The song also opens straight away with the guitar hook, so you know what to expect. It’s by far one of their more melodious songs, too. “Noise” is the only appropriate descriptor that can be applied to a considerable portion of Cows’ music.
“Hitting the Wall” is a full 180 from “Down Below”. This is the deep end, opening with jarring, frantic, atonal electric jangling in both ears, a barely discernible melody played way down in the lower register, and the singer’s vocals way up the other way (yes, screaming), that lasts almost uncomfortably long, before switching back to the main melody. Then he screams again.
“No, I’m Not Coming Out” is a good change of pace. The quality’s been cleaned up a bunch so it no longer sounds like it was recorded on a 90’s cellphone and then played to be recorded by another 90’s cellphone and then put on an album. And, the guy is whisper-singing most of the time, so there’s no hidden jumpscares. Even the instrumentals aren’t super in-your-face, which was generally the case with this last album of theirs. Sorry in Pig Minor, their last album, is a significant departure from the eight that precede it, but the songs’ structure and what can be inferred of their composing process seem very much preserved. In “No I’m Not Coming Out”, there’s still one repeated hook, in the form of a looped and layered sample of the singer groaning, and of course the guitar still sounds kinda out of tune. Wouldn’t be Cows if it didn’t.
Moo.
-Mans
Out the Other 