#686: E is for Elfman, Danny

I was horrified
by the A$AP Rocky
performance on SNL.
No live music. Couldn’t tell
you if he was lip syncing or
really singing, and the staging of
whatever that was, of the dancing
or whatever, was nonsensical and
sloppy. But what was most horrifying
is that I recognized the drummer. Who
is that naked torso man with all the tatts
and the long crazy red hair? OMG, that’s
Danny Elfman! Pretending to play the drums
in a bad mostly prerecorded choreographed mess.
This is not the way I want to see my musical hero!
I couldn’t tell you if the music was any good,
so disappointed was I in the pretend
performance against backing tracks
and absolutely beside myself that
Elfman would participate in
such a stupid thing. I’d like
to think that the genius
behind Oingo Boingo
and Batman and
Pee Wee would
never do this
with his own
music.

Oh well, whatever that was, and
whatever reason he had for doing it, no
matter; it’s time to return to Elfman’s music.
His first solo record in 37 years
is a thing called Big Mess, 2021. It’s
cover art seems straight out of a horror
film, or from the horror show that was
Covid-19. I remember being so excited
about new rock music from one of
my favorite lead singers of all time,
but I didn’t listen to it very much
and then I put it away. It’s
been five years since I spun it last.
It’s a heavy, scary record, more
nightmarish than anything from
Oingo Boingo. Combining heavy
metal moves, vocal choirs, spooky
orchestrations, theatrical lead vocals
and screaming, I think it was just
a difficult record to love, infused as
it was with so much bile. As great
a singer as Elfman is, he seems to
have abandoned melody altogether
for this record, or at least, the kind
of melody that made so many of
Oingo Boingo’s most memorable tunes
so memorable, and so many of the
themes from his soundtrack work
so indelible. I mean, there are melodies,
there just not very melodic or hooky.
I’m being a baby, I know.
I can’t expect an Artist with a capital
A to continuously make the kind of
music I loved from them earlier in
their career, and I realize what Elfman
is doing here is creating art, that his
last impulse is to make a hit record.
Given the magnitude of his success,
a hit record is the last thing he needs.
He’s in a position to be able to do
whatever the hell he wants and that’s
exactly what he’s doing here. Those
of us who loved him and are still
interested in what he’s doing will just
have to be along for the ride. I’m game.
It’s undeniably interesting stuff, far
from boring, as one would expect, and
it’s full of heavy-hitting musicianship;
it’s just difficult listening. Hands down the
most challenging thing in Elfman’s catalog.
The song “Happy” is the closest thing
to recognizable Elfman, that deviousness,
that circus music flare, that irony, and
the one characteristic that is evident
on the rest of the album, that insane,
manic energy, that punk rock aesthetic,
more aggressive now, more wicked,
and more profane.

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Notes on the vinyl edition: Big Mess, Anti/Epitaph Records, 2021, double heavyweight vinyl, black and gray swirl on disc one, sky blue vinyl on disc two.

In case you don’t already know: I’m listening to almost everything in my vinyl collection, A to Z, and writing at least one, sometimes two or three long skinny poem-like-things in response for each artist, and on a few occasions, writing a long skinny poem-like-thing in response to more than one artist. As a poet and a student of poetry, I understand that these things look like poems, but they don’t really sound much like poetry, hence, I call them “poem-like-things.” I’ll admit that they’re just long, skinny essays that veer every now and then into the poetic or lyric.