The drums are inevitable. When the recording starts the drums and bass have already begun, drums churning, bass rising and falling. From the sound of their grim certainty they may have begun when that meteor wiped out the dinosaurs, and are still going today.
Damo Suzuki’s mumbling joins in almost immediately: something about your Daddies airplane? something something beautiful rose? Anyone claiming to know the lyrics is suspect. Damo’s lyrics are almost always improvised and prone to be changed at any moment. Switching between English, German, Japanese, and languages all his own, the true meaning of the son lies in a mondegreen just outside the realm of coherent meaning.
But then our mumbling guide catches us off guard. He breaks the uncertainty with an accusation.
“Hey You!”
in accordance the tom toms let out a quick volley of blows. For a moment Damo joins the circular procession.
“You’re Losing… You’re Losing… You’re Losing… You’re Losing Your…”
Just then an avalanche falls. The crash cymbal explodes and the guitar joins in like 2 tons of shattering glass.
The accusation is clear…
“You’re losing your Vitamin C!”
I always reach for a clementine or a packet of Emergen-C. Because he’s right. Where’s my immunity? Privilege can leave you fragile, unable to cope with responsibilities.
The song continues much the same. The same marching drums, the same judgmental bass line. Something about Christmas, something about stepping on quicksand. But now behind it is a subtle addition. The guitar strings click and hum like the winding of a watch. They occasionally snap out aggressively to hint at the increasing frantic energy of the song.
In the next chorus the drums are meaner, Damo is ruder, and way back in the mix the keyboard begins to play.
Damo makes his confident accusation a second time and the drums take over. a break of precision like the robots that rivet cars.
The organ comes in to calm everything down, a haunted duet with a flute.
If the flute had lyrics it would sing of the inevitable demise of a tragically young bourgeois.
It’s fitting then that this funeral procession be gradually drowned out by the noise of flutes and computers, evocative of the birds who are indifferent to our suffering.
When Damo chimes in a gain it is as a pathetic echo before the song is forgotten, not even ended just absorbed into the next song on the album. Vitamin C is absorbed by the “Soup.”
Wonderfully written.
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