Sometimes, the comment section of a music video can be more helpful than one realizes. Austin, TX’s Pipe’s current three-song EP is billed as a preview of what’s to come for their full album. In the music video comments, people are already comparing them to Panda Bear (using Noah Lennox’s government name). Psych-punk pioneers/pranksters Butthole Surfers, and the way the music sounds, the haphazard patchwork fully supports that statement. But I would also like to suggest another sound: imagine if Alex G listened to more Psychedelic Horseshit or Times New Viking and less Coma Cinema or Lou Barlow solo projects.
The opener “Asshole” plops you right into the middle of a dreamy beginning, only for it to play a Trojan horse for what follows: a manic surf punk instrumental section. Not a bad application of the Pixies’ LOUDquietLOUD theory, but even after that, the early comparison is where the third section comes in. That section sounds like what would happen if a band from the Elephant Six collective completely hijacked the song and never planned on returning it. Hell, if you want to frame it differently, the last two sections were just extra doors hiding their primary fuzz pop sound. The rest of the songs, “Pie” and “Cologne,” are played more straightforwardly with fuzzy guitars and twisted musical arrangements that promise to hold your attention. It’s lo-fi pop that is just too damn unmotivated to wash its hair. That isn’t to say that their songs will not have a few electronic flourishes here and there, but they are only such compared to the main tunes.
As for the lyrics, they all carry a very stream-of-consciousness approach, but if you want to seek out meaning a few lines stand out as hints. The chorus “Falling down around the ocean trying hard to make it right, behind the image of what he’s supposed to be” suggests a fight to maintain motivation, a sense of goodness, and the face of righteousness that somehow doesn’t feel very fitting to their character. A lot of choice lines tackle this feeling of trying to reject troubling moments and, in the case of “Cologne,” what may have caused them. “I’m happy that you died,” stated straightforwardly by a singer whose name remains anonymous in the bio. “Your red, delicious smile, it tastes like chalk for a while.” But the singing is so far faded into the background that sussing out a topic or meaning is almost a futile task, when you can just focus on how it blends in with the music.
If you need plenty of ramshackle in your psychedelic rock n’ roll, then “Asshole Pie Cologne” will likely scratch that itch you are looking for.
Written by mynameisblueskye
