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RETURN TO FORM Abe Diaz
Alas, tis shit! —Plank, 2006 The Ordinary World You press play and the disc whirrs. The player’s digital timecode displays a row of zeros accompanied by a brief but tense silence. Then, the first sound you hear is an arpeggio. Five cascading notes from the mellow hum of an electric piano followed by the pulse of a kick drum. Is it a real kit or a machine? You can’t quite tell. Meanwhile, the electric keys cycle through a short three-chord progression: C major, D flat minor, E flat minor, and back to C major. Phrygian—according to Western music theory—therefore enigmatic. Haunting, even, especially once the unintelligible vocals fade in, scrubbing forward and backward, chanting gibberish. The soundscape is unsettling. But groovy. And you notice your foot is quietly tapping along with the subtle metronomic drive of the bass drum. The garbled chants give way to an unmistakable voice. However, while you recognize the bright timbre of the singer, you cannot decipher the bizarre lyrics, the first “verse” a repetition of the same line: Yesterday, I woke up sucking on lemon. Yesterday, I woke up sucking on lemon. . . . You contemplate whether it has value as surrealist poetry, or if it is just trivial nonsense. It isn’t long before you ask Where are the guitars? I thought this was “alt-rock.” Give me a power chord forchristsake. You watch the timecode accumulate elapsed time, holding your breath as you anticipate a moment of relief at the sound of something more familiar. Your foot continues tapping while you wait. And wait. While the track’s eponymous refrain insists that Everything is in Its Right Place, nothing about this place seems right to you at all.
