Hanson - Penny & Me (Cooking Vinyl)
Pay attention 7B! The common language is vanishing! It is slowly being crushed to death under the weight of verbal conglomerate, a nearly-speech at once both pretentious and feeble, that is created daily by millions of inconsistencies and inaccuracies in grammar and syntax! Or so Hanson would have you believe with their latest emotional-tap, neo-country comment on words and how we speak them, innit.
The tinny overflow of Hanson leaking from a personal stereo is a common sound in classrooms all over this land, but perhaps not as common as a good old grammatical debate. Through the medium of taut ballad and cheery American chorus, all Yield signs and denim crotch, Hanson are revitalising the argument through lyric; “But it's still Penny and I all alone beneath the sky/It's always Penny and me tonight.”
And I or and me?
The reverberation of still and always in those two lines form a vibration that dominates this three minute burst of angelic canteen-blues and confirms the twenty-something AOLTimeWarner veterans as being in a cerebral class of their own. Attacking the French notion of rime croisée, Hanson are unafraid to go straight for the playground jugular with their fly/by/try/high line endings. There is a subtlety about their work here, much more so than the rejection of the English language in their nonsense hit MmmBop which featured the instantly forgettable (hence the recollection here) chorus of “Mmm bop ba duba dop ba du bop ba duba dop ba du bop ba duba dop ba du” and laid the ground work for such seminal releases as Sigur Ros’ 2004 gibberish 12” Ba Ba Ti Ki Do.
So with Hanson - to bust traditional vernacular the fuck open - you gets what you pays for. In the history of modern English there is no period in which such victory over thought-in-speech has been so widespread. Clarke Isaac, Jordan Taylor and Zachary Walker are chronicling that change with the speculative fiction of a grand piano, a Gibson SG and a DW four piece (with Zildjians). These post-pubescents are moving semantic boundaries and you better stop talking at the back and straighten your tie, because they don’t mind sounding like Billy Joel french-kissing Sheryl Crow in doing it.
The tinny overflow of Hanson leaking from a personal stereo is a common sound in classrooms all over this land, but perhaps not as common as a good old grammatical debate. Through the medium of taut ballad and cheery American chorus, all Yield signs and denim crotch, Hanson are revitalising the argument through lyric; “But it's still Penny and I all alone beneath the sky/It's always Penny and me tonight.”
And I or and me?
The reverberation of still and always in those two lines form a vibration that dominates this three minute burst of angelic canteen-blues and confirms the twenty-something AOLTimeWarner veterans as being in a cerebral class of their own. Attacking the French notion of rime croisée, Hanson are unafraid to go straight for the playground jugular with their fly/by/try/high line endings. There is a subtlety about their work here, much more so than the rejection of the English language in their nonsense hit MmmBop which featured the instantly forgettable (hence the recollection here) chorus of “Mmm bop ba duba dop ba du bop ba duba dop ba du bop ba duba dop ba du” and laid the ground work for such seminal releases as Sigur Ros’ 2004 gibberish 12” Ba Ba Ti Ki Do.
So with Hanson - to bust traditional vernacular the fuck open - you gets what you pays for. In the history of modern English there is no period in which such victory over thought-in-speech has been so widespread. Clarke Isaac, Jordan Taylor and Zachary Walker are chronicling that change with the speculative fiction of a grand piano, a Gibson SG and a DW four piece (with Zildjians). These post-pubescents are moving semantic boundaries and you better stop talking at the back and straighten your tie, because they don’t mind sounding like Billy Joel french-kissing Sheryl Crow in doing it.
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