Review. Matmos - "The Rose Has Teeth in the Mouth of a Beast"

Life, at its core, is really a series of experiences. Rarely is there a unifying thread. This is not a sitcom where everything ties together and you are satisfied every thirty minutes. But our feeble human brains want some sort of resolution, and so it has a way of categorizing our experiences, so that you can say - "Oh, that was just like that one time..." so everything, even the shockingly new, seems comfortable. But every so often, you come across circumstances that make you question if it's all that easy, or if there's some higher power telling you - "This is not a coincidence!" Enter Matmos' The Rose Has Teeth in the Mouth of a Beast.

Trying to listen to The Rose Has Teeth in the Mouth... is precisely like slogging through an epic hangover. All the appropriate emotions will surface, and you'll just want it to be over. You'll even bargain - "I'll never buy off the used rack again" starts to sound an awful lot like "I will never drink 3 King Cobras and a bottle of generic NyQuil again". But all the promises in the world won't save you.

Waking up, your katzenjammer can't decide what form it will take. Massive headache, malfunctioning gastrointestinal system, vodka-scented "sweat", nausea, general spaciness? - they're all present, and they're all going to get worse. Meanwhile, Matmos refuses to commit to making music, "music", found sound (while we're here - note to bands everywhere: committing to wax the sounds of your spoons or toaster or other household items is clever...syke!), or even a coherent lyric. Either way, ten minutes in, you feel like you must be on a hidden camera show documenting how long you'll be able to last before giving up (either suicide or unplugging your headphones, depending).

Your parents/housemate/complete stranger offering to pick you up a Sausage McDisgusting is portrayed brilliantly by Matmos providing an unsolicited post-modern/feminist screed in the form of "Tract for Valerie Solanas" (sample lyric: Unable to relate with love, the man must work/ Females crave absorbing emotionally satisfying meaningul activity/but lacking the opportunity or ability for this they prefer to idle and waste away their time in ways of their own choosing - and this is from the track that actually delivers the most satisfying narrative). Believe me mom/housemate/Matmos - I don't want this and you should please leave me alone.

While TRHTITMOTB bombards you with non sequiturs, you are struggling to piece things together...last night, your life, the menial task that's currently got you flummoxed at work - you just can't make sense of the things going on around you. Sure, there are glimpses that you'll make it through. That first drink of the Gatorade you planted in the fridge (how you planned ahead for that one is beyond all of us) or that brief halfway-head-bob-able bassline. But your pleasant moment is snatched away so quickly by the feeling that your stomach isn't ready even for Gatorade or the random, not seemingly random, but legitimately random beats and bells and 5 o'clock whistles (seriously!) that you wish you never drank the Gatorade or picked up on the buried beat in the first place. This is a frustrating experience that you won't soon forget. Matmos so convincingly plays the part of an aural hangover that you might reconsider your stance on the whole coincidence or fate question.

At the end of this experience, you can sum up your feelings thusly: Dear alcohol/Matmos: I don't care how much Frank Sinatra/Bjork likes you - you and me are through. Except you, alcohol, we're still cool.

On the standard -500 to +1000 scale, Matmos' Rose Teeth Mouth Beast garners:

-225.
After all, the old indie maxim "It's better to be bad than boring" does ring true, and while they are certainly bad, Matmos manages to be boring only for half of the record.