While walking down a particularly mundane stretch of a road near my campus, a realization dawns upon me, blooms in my head like a gallon of viscous bubbles I imagine erupts in my stomach of unsatisfactory health everytime I down a caffeinated soda. Life, I think, epiphanically, would be unbearable without music. Now, you can argue that this line of thought is not anything revelatory or new. It has occurred to me in spurs of thoughts before, but not at this degree of severity in clarity.
Half of my move to Mumbai has been spent staring at the skyline and being surprised that one could go that far up — that living could be done 50 floors up in the air. But to return — my realization occurs to me when I am listening to W.A.E by Begum, nodding along to the percussion line, a little out of breath as I make my way down the slope that leads to a tiny back-gate that is tucked away, almost like a secret of sorts, between adjacent construction sites. Life, I think, would be unbearable in the absence of music, because every stretch of every familiar road and every bit of routine begrudgingly accepted would be just what it is, and nothing more. Untextured, nondescript, so powerfully mundane that the banality blares in your ear until you swallow it all down and grit your teeth for life.
I listen to W.A.E by Begum randomly, there is no fun origin story. Spotify autoplays it, while I make my way down the slope of exhaustion — and this is not an album I have not heard before, I have skimmed through it, have heard it on aesthetic-prone friends’ Instagram stories, but this is an album that I have not paid attention to, before. For the most part, the music on this record sounds like what you would hear on a VHS tape, held faraway — it is almost like you are skirting the exteriors of a house that holds a party you have not been invited to, but you can hear the live band from the end of the road.
I like the humor on the album – it has a biting, tart quality that lends to itself a distinct sense of hurt – the kind that is like an unsheathed paper knife left in a closed fist for too long and now the wound has gained a sentient temperament. All My Friends Are Sluts, one of the biggest cult hits that has spawned off the record nests the lines “Got my all you see / Now I know I know it/ I was always sure/ Got to see you failing/ I was always keen/Though I know you’re such a whore.” The vocals are sardonic in their delivery, sounding like a bitter smile inhabits the corner of the singer’s mouth as he stares into the distance – six feet deep in irony.
The second song off the album, which also lends it its title, is We Are Excited, it is groovy, it is sunny, the percussion makes you feel like all the sad things in life are a tunnel you can burrow your way out of. The song is circular, there is excitement, there is a plummeting down into misery, there is a thrust back up — all put forward with the ease of a track that does not hammer its emotion into you, but gently transposes it onto your being.
On Bandcamp, the band puts forward this description for the album : “One day a mysterious spirit animal came to us one evening as we brandished our instruments and debated world semantics after many a jubilation he broke and down and began to speak of the troubles in his world and how the darkness didn’t allow him to exist in peace, We asked him how he traveled between these two worlds. He told us of a way to travel between dimensions and stated that he did so freely and at will, seeing our plight he promised that he would take us back to our dimension we thus decided to follow him , he led us through a portal but when we reached the other side we realised we had been duped” — this is a stretching motif all over the album, the duping, it is like making a journey expectant of a cathartic reset, but being put back where you were, perhaps with more experiential learning, but still as a stickler at your core. The near choral chants on the words “oh I hope” in The One, add to this sort of becoming in sound. This record reminds me of a lot of Deerhoof’s projects, in an odd way. Or something by Enon. The record manages to remind one of so many things and still remain distinct, and I presume that is one of its many victories.
There is a tongue-in-cheek Nirvana homage, Smells Like a Rip Off. The dialogue, the excerpts from speeches, the muted voices in the background adds to the intimacy of the album. At some point, you realize, you are almost in the same room as them — the band talks, records, sings, and you listen, unaware of what exactly everything means but you are not excluded from all of this. You are still in the room, and your ears are open.
My favorite off this album has to be Nothing On My Mind. The hi-hat in the chaos is a portrait of your mind, and the bassline is nothing you have not heard before. You bask in the familiarity, as “I can sure fake control” spins in your head.”
By the time I get to Sleepy, the last track off the album — I am in the last dregs of a boring class, and I have plugged in an earphone casually, because none of it makes sense. The sound is hazy, and I like the metronome. I look at my friend who asked me to put my hands down once when I clasped them too strong — and close my eyes. It never matters that much. At least as long as you can soundtrack it out.
