Perfect No. 4

Dan McGee, frontman of Spider Bags, had a brain aneurysm last year, one of the more unpredictable and terrifying medical disasters that can befall a human. Rumor is he's on a long road to full recovery. Hope so. The dude has so many songs to sing. He may even write one about this new trauma. 

I think that's what's most stirring about Dan McGee and Spider Bags. The songs sound like painful recoveries they've endured, filtered through deeply dark humor and sardonic wit. "Lay down with the wrong woman, and you may as well lay down everything" (from Blood for You) is sung with wisdom and regret and abandon. It's a terrific country line pulled from their masterpiece A Celebration of Hunger. That record's perfect. But it's not the subject of this missive, Perfect No. 4. 

Celebration already has a terrific appreciation. If I may borrow a paragraph from it, I think this still holds true for their more recent output: 

Miles away from the confrontational and abrasive (if often humorous) punk rock of [his former band] the DC Snipers, McGee’s new music was a more sincere and earnest depiction of the ne’er-do-well narrator he’d been establishing in his punk songs, drawing on his early years of studying Harry Smith’s Anthology of American Folk Music and diving into its many adjacent rabbit holes. As he began to discover the magic of music, the young McGee was “just buying folk blues records, then finding what label [they’re] on and trying to find other records on the same label, getting into jazz and just going through the list of the people that played on it, seeing if they had any records, trying to find stuff that way.” Marrying this reverence for the most enduring American musical traditions to the immediacy and do-it-yourself ethic of punk, McGee had found a powerful new sound.    

Your eyes are rolling. You think I'm about to unleash a neo-Fugazi-sound on you. Nope. Someday Everything Will Be Fine is a country record. It's sort of Uncle Tupelo + Geraldine Fibbers (the band that started my perfect cataloging), and just might be the ultimate 2020s record.  

Let's get into it. Just one little reminder: Spider Bags are doing something very strange: they are trying to be funny and playful while toying with genres and unreliable narrators. This is a cowpunk record of Butthole Surfers proportions. And the key to it all (the sendups, the dustups, the heartbreak, and sonic mischief) is to remind all of us that someday everything will be fine. And that's good to know. 

Reckless is all that. It starts in parody, builds with intensity, and ends with the album's title being sung impossibly high. This is a supremely complicated song. It unfolds in a very Gibby Haynes' way. The imbecile with nothing to lose at the outset definitely matures into something heavier (but no less silly) at about the 4-minute mark when the song dips its toe into Family Ngozi Zamrock as we hear "someday everything will be fine" be shouted like a forgotten chorus. It's an unserious song. A hoot. Except, there are lines in this song that are devastatingly good. 

And that's gonna be a theme of this record. It's darkly poetic and fun at the same time. Just like the time in which it was created and the world in which I'm now presenting it.   

Oxcart Blues has a rift that this band just seems to find again and again. I'm mystified by the rugged effortlessness of their sound. It's gorgeous but unclean. There are a thousand ways this song could've been overproduced and wrecked. Whew.  

Alligator starts with a pun. That's perfect, 'cause the narrator of this song doesn't want you to feel pity. When he assures with "that's alright," it's in a most Lou Reed sort of way, punctuated by an assault of guitar. This is a noisy country song.   

Burning Sand is a completely different story. This is an anthem. Listen to that guitar. This is not wasted noodling; it's setting the stage for rock and roll worthy of Fred & Toody Cole style duet. Or maybe it's the ghostly hand of ______ coaxing this song into something that might fit on Exile on Mainstreet. 

Cop Dream/Black Eye (True Story) is a wink at their hardcore roots without compromising the honky tonk foundation of this record. 

My Heart is a Flame in Reverse is my nominee for best written song of this young century and probably its best country song, too. It is novelistic in the way Tangle Up In Blue makes you smile through bittersweetness. It's a humbling ride. Consider how "they saw a child asleep in the back of a hearst. Not all of life's truths can be contained in verse," gives way to a casual "la la la," to prove the point. There are about a half dozen moments in this tale that are worthy of note, but it's best to discover 'em on your own. Suffice to say, when he shouts, "and he loved her all the more for it," I feel the complicated heartbreak, despite this pair being utterly distant to me. That is an achievement.

Tonight, I walk on Water is a return to punk honky tonk... which sounds like a terrible team-up but goddamn this furious shot song just blasts right on through those guardrails.

Ninety Day Dog is the song that appeared on my faves from 2019. It has a rushed swagger that's John Spencer and Jack White in its approach. Is it blues? Maybe? I think it resides closer to a speeding Hank Williams.      

Apocalypso is a country Butthole Surfers song, reminding me when those boys would slow it down and let the trip and heat have its way. 

Rolling with the Flow might represent a return of the early narrator, now wiser and accompanied by strings. He's made it through and has time for a little triumphant silliness. This song is over-the-top and a really great way to wind down the sonic weirdness. Listening to the cacophony at the end and its spiralling oddity, I find this whole record to be equal parts David Lynch & Bob Dylan. I've stewed over this record a lot over the years, and those two seem like the best descriptors of what is going on within this mighty and utterly overlooked record... as bizarre as the world around us.