PHARAOS – we’ve tried nothing and we’re all out of ideas
(CD, hip hip hip)
Here is a little story about a friend of mine that I
have never told anybody, and I have no idea how many people know about this
at all anyway. Quite a few years back, when live was still a lot easier, he
fell in love with a girl, as it happens every day of the earth a hundred
times. We were together on a concert either of Jets To Brazil or an early
Weakerthans-show, when they were still good and hadn’t turned into a
festival-opener act. In these days we had just stopped to wear band t-shirts
all the time and tried to go for a more stylish approach to all things.
Maybe this is what attracted him to this special girl and her to him. She
was maybe two years older than him and had spent some time in the USA, so
she had that special air of scenester knowledge around her. Their
relationship lasted for a couple of months and then they broke up. Nothing
special so far, but the real tragic (or weird) thing about their break up
was that once, a few weeks after the fact he discloses the whys and whats of
their break up to me.
The thing was like this: they looked good together and
seemed to enjoy each other quite well as far as I could tell. But then one
day she said to him, that she thought about her life and she had set her
mind to change her style. She didn’t want to keep on in the same style
anymore because it seemed superficial and also unfashionable to her. She
really threw out all her alternative rock and pop CDs, stuff that some
months ago she had claimed to me was the best thing and meant all the life
to her. I know, because I held my hands open and caught some Pearl Jam
albums, my first Karate
album (which was a blessing, I still love their music) and some lesser known
alternative pop. In these days bands like these (not Pearl Jam but the
lesser known ones) would still play squats that usually housed only hardcore
and straightforward punk bands on the reason of being on an indie label and
from the US. Anyway, she broke up with my pal because he questioned her
reasons and the rationality of her decisions. Basically, she told him to
either go along with her or get lost. She had decided to get tattoos and
piercings and colour her hair in strange ways, and get interested in all
kinds of deviant issues. Very much like Suicide Girls (if you know that…)
and to give her credit she was one of the first people around here to
approach that kind of lifestyle.
Consequently, she left Austria for New York not long
after that and we haven’t heard of her since. For all I know she could be
a gothic-arts-rock-chick or a paediatrician right now. Who cares? My friend though was
shattered for the time being. He boiled all of this down to her
leaving him for wearing the wrong kind of clothes and listening to the wrong
kind of music – all of which attracted her to him just half a year
earlier. But that is the way people are and the way fashions go. But what is
wrong about sticking to something you like once you have found something
that gives meaning to your life? Nothing, I would say. Not a single damn
thing.
And the reason I am remembering all of this now is
because of this album here: “we’ve tried nothing and we’re all out of
ideas” by the Pharaos. Not only does the title perfectly describe the
slacker lifestyle we had back then, their music is also a lot like what my
friend liked to listen to (me also, but I also listened to punk, Japan Noise
and country at the same time, while he only listened to that early style of
emo pop). Two guitars, bass and drums with not a lot ado and no electronics
or guitar solos, radiating energy that lives on melodies and the punch they
are able to produce in their arrangements. Four guys in their middle to late
twenties, with not a lot to do but bang it out in their garage. All of this
seems so familiar and at the same time it is fresh and crisp. Yes, probably
I have the feeling that I have heard all of this before, but I don’t care.
I also re-discovered the first albums of Elvis Costello and the Stiff Little
Fingers long after their height, and so I know that there are people who had
the same “heard that”-feeling when they listened to the stuff that I am
comparing this to now.
No,
no, no. I like the Pharaos and this seven song mini album. They bitch about tv
advertisement (yeah, right...), sing about how they lost orientation
somewhere in a city and how they killed a moth in their wardrobe or how much
it sucks to get stuck in traffic. There might be some deeper meaning to all
of this, but they do their bitching with energy and harmony vocals in the
back at times, so what do I care. I know already that it is the little
things that make or break live, and in memory these little things either get
lost or stick forever. They might be great to watch in a small club, so I
will keep an eye out for their name. Anyway, today it is all foggy and soggy
outside, and inside the rooms take their time to getting really warm and
cosy, so some nice alternative pop is all the best to keep us comfy on this
Sunday noon.
