Out Past The Edge Of What They Know
Posted on | February 16, 2007 at 8:06 am | Comments Off
I know I’m a little late to the party on this one, but I have recently joined the Cult of Jonathan Coulton (aka “JoCo”). 2fs put Skullcrusher Mountain on a mix CD, and since hearing that track I’ve had to go out and hear everything the man has recorded. I immediately bought all six of his available discs at CDBaby (including the Thing-A-Week box set) and downloaded the MP3-only EP Our Bodies, Ourselves, Our Cybernetic Arms from his website. And I still can’t get enough. I have found my God. It’s not just because he sings about geek subjects near and dear to the hearts of me and my ilk. It’s not just that his lyrics are LOL funny. It’s not just that the non-funny songs are usually incredibly poignant and relatable to those of us who usually find ourselves on the outside when it comes to interactions with other humans. It’s not just that he reminds me of all the best parts of similar artists like Weird Al Yankovic, Tom Lehrer, They Might Be Giants, and Barenaked Ladies (and surpasses them all, in my opinion). It’s not just that he’s friends with (and musical director for) Resident Expert man-of-the-moment John Hodgman. It’s not just that he goes to great lengths to make his music available for all to hear and use as they please.
It’s all that and more. What puts the icing on the cake for me is that his songs are incredibly catchy and hook-filled. His musical style could be loosely described as folk-rock, though there are plenty of crunchy guitars, 80s synths, and drums mixed in. And the man can sing and play the acoustic guitar. Most people who tend to dabble in this fringe area of musical genres usually have odd sounding voices, or they can’t really sing at all. The very normalcy of JoCo’s voice is what makes the lyrical surprises and the melodic hooks stand out all the more. Even his lesser songs usually have some sort of musical or lyrical bit to reel you in. And he’s prolific! For one whole year, he recorded a song (”thing”) a week and posted it on his website. And a great deal of them were pure gems and well-produced. If you look JoCo up on YouTube, you’ll find that a great many people have made fascinating videos set to his songs, some using machinima computer game engines like World of Warcraft. Also check out the Jonathan Coulton Project for more videos.
So, whether you’re interested in hearing about a murderous lovelorn evil genius (the aforementioned Skullcrusher Mountain), a giant squid with an existential crisis (I Crush Everything), an office-drone-turned-zombie who uses his empty bizspeak to try to ensnare a co-worker (Re Your Brains), an assembly-line computer programmer with boss issues and a crush on his office’s receptionist (Code Monkey), the world’s weirdest Christmas song about a family trapped on an asteroid and forced to work the mines by their robot captors (Chiron Beta Prime), the pleasures of “doin’ it” outdoors (First of May), or a lesson about fractal mathematics and the man behind them (The Mandelbrot Set), you can’t go wrong with JoCo. He even does some astounding covers, like his catchy acoustic version of Sir Mix-A-Lot’s Baby Got Back and a brings-tears-to-your-eyes faithful rendition of Leonard Cohen’s Famous Blue Raincoat. And all that is just the tip of the iceberg.
If you’re looking for a good place to start in the JoCo oeuvre disc-wise, I would avoid his first album Smoking Monkey. Though every song is good, and it contains the classic Ikea, it’s not really up to par with his later material. You can’t go wrong with the 5-song EP Where Tradition Meets Tomorrow. But my favorite is probably Thing-A-Week II. It’s a good mixture of the hilarious and the heartfelt.
Go forth and worship at the altar of JoCo! If you take no other action after reading this entry, you must at least please go watch the video for the song Flickr.
Latre.