Do You Wonder What Went Right?
I have never written about Andrew WK ever. So why start now?
I’ll tell you why.
2006’s “Close Calls With Brick Walls” is, without a doubt, at least in the upper echelon of amazing, instant classic pop records of the 21st century. Andrew WK is what you you get when you make a sandwich out of just a hint of the Lords of the New Church, and full and equal doses of Rancid and Meat Loaf. I know. It sounds really, really, really lame.
So why the fuck does it work? It actually works. It actually, some days, doesn’t get any better than this. This man is a silent, slippery saint. A giant one, at that.
By the time the disc’s sixth track, “Hand On The Place”, boots up, it’s clear that Andrew WK is not interested in partying as a means to an end. A lot of these songs, if they didn’t have computerized keg parties smothering them (and if arranged a wee bit less abrasively), could easily have been written by Wayne Fontana or Gary Puckett. Even if those guys only had, well gosh, less than a half dozen hits, they still banged around in a healthy morsel of American radio.
And though those sixties cheeseball super-dayglo-popper groups were basically peddling glorified jock jams unto themselves, none of them really talked about the existential crisis of playing to a packed club and not knowing what to project as a performer. Naw, those old song were about love.
So sure, he’s not partying, but it’s almost like he’s bringing the misery to the party and putting a Virtua Boy headset on. He’s distracting himself, but it’s not with more love. He realizes that only application and dedication to the moment will reveal themselves to be his downfall. He wants to keep partying, but he’s not sure that’s what it will take to get the people together.
By the time we hear “The Moving Room”, we wonder how our favorite party animal could possibly turn a normal song into an audio love-child of Journey and Bryan Adams, but we want him to outdo Kanye West in the electronic torment department anyday in the future, too.
“Come Dance With Me” is what would happen if Fats Domino recorded pump-up music for the Cavs in 2015. And then the album ends. And you have to put it on the next time you get drunk, and cry into your Orange Julius with vodka in it.
