Statues weep. Broken hearts heal. And the band plays on.
The Wallace Bros. second album: “Popular Songs That Will Live Forever, Vol. 2: Hip Hop”, is a grossly misnamed collection of infectiously danceable pop and heroin drones, most anchored with Casiotone keyboard beats (one of which is unmistakably copped from Tone-Loc’s “Wild Thing”)—and all topped by their trademark “hard-ass with soft-underbelly” lyrics, which, in all but three of the 10 songs, begin with the two words “every time.” It’s a record obviously destined for complete obscurity, were it not for the nationwide outbreak of supernatural phenomena which surrounded its late-summer release.
“I’ve got to say it looked pretty gay to me,” says 12-year-old Michael Hoyt, of Rome, GA, who sustained a broken ankle with multiple fractures during a travel-league soccer game. “How they turned those city lights into stars on the cover.” But after his leg had been set, his older sister popped the Wallace Bros. album into the car radio on the way home, and Hoyt was gripped by a tingling sensation so strong that he burst into tears. His mother quickly turned the car back towards the hospital, where doctors were shocked to discover that the complicated break which X-rays had documented only hours before was completely healed.
The record appeared to be powerless to resuscitate Hoyt’s pet snake, which had died a few weeks earlier, and lay buried under a shallow layer of soil among the roots of his mothers prize hostas, but that didn’t prevent both a pilgrimage of local seekers, and a fundamentalist demonstration against the album and it’s suspected evils, complete with effigies of the siblings, which were burnt in the usually peaceful suburban street.
Predictably, the buzz led to strong opening-week sales, placing the Wallace Bros. comfortably in the Billboard Top Ten, although some Southern and Midwestern stations dropped their hit single, “I Can See No Reason To Believe” from their playlists. And as the reports pour in, both album owners and casual radio listeners have credited the music of the Wallace Bros. with alleviating a broad array of maladies, from poison ivy to chronic heart trouble—although it should be noted that actual record buyers seem to experience far more dramatic results than casual listeners.
The Wallace Bros. sophomore album also appears to have strange effects on inanimate objects. Detroit fans claim to have seen the angelic faces which overlook the street outside the abandoned Cadillac Hotel begin to weep, while the fans were briefly parked below, blaring the CD. Wallace Bros. album owners in several states describe incidents in which shelved books, particularly of poetry, will actually take flight from bookshelves, circle the room, and alight on couches, tables, or piano benches, usually open, while the album is playing. One volume, a turquoise first-edition of Edna St. Vincent Millay, found an open window and made a complete escape. And one listener descended to his basement to investigate an eerie glow and discovered that his entire moving box full of Christmas lights were all burning bright, even though no cord was plugged into a power source.
The Wallace Bros. are pleasantly surprised by the record’s reception, although Mark expresses some concern that the phenomena surrounding the release may be obscuring what for him lies at the heart of the matter: “We just wanted to write some songs,” he says. “And now there are these weird statues, and lights, and healings. I just wish someone would talk about the songs.
“I guess I understand how a record album might not seem as important as someone dying in the street.
“But no one’s died from this one yet. Have they?”
The SPIN Interview
SPIN: Well, I’ve spent quite a lot of time with your album.
CW: Thank God. I don’t think the guy from Rolling Stone even listened to it.
SPIN: Rolling Stone. I applied for a job there once.
MW: Yeah?
SPIN: They didn’t give it to me.
(pause)
SPIN: Well, maybe I should begin with the obvious: you titled your record “Popular Songs That Will Live Forever, Vol 2.: Hip Hop.” But it doesn’t really sound like hip hop. At least not anything that anyone else is calling hip hop these days. Or has ever called hip hop, really.
CW: Well, we have a drum machine now.
MW: We thought it was funny.
SPIN: I don’t get it.
CW: That’s how it’s been going.
SPIN: Now, Carey, you’re responsible for the lyrics on these records, am I right?
CW: My last name’s Wallace.
SPIN: Seven out of ten of these songs begin with the words “Every time.”
CW: It’s a concept album.
SPIN: In Rolling Stone, you described your last record as a concept album, as well. Do you think there’s any chance you keep doing concept albums because you’re afraid you can’t just write a good song that can stand out there on its own?
CW: Well, I think that’s why most bands who are really high-concept do it, but not us.
MW: No.
SPIN: These lyrics, they’re really complex. Especially in your hit single, “I Can See No Reason To Believe.” You’re not just doing traditional end rhymes. You’ve got this incredibly strict scheme where you actually repeat the same word at the beginning and end of each verse. And then in other ones, you’re doing this repeat and replace thing, almost like a villanelle or a pantoume, one of those repeating French poems. Although none of them are villanelles in the strictest sense, because that would involve an evenly metered nineteen-line poem, with the first and third lines repeated at the end of each three-line stanza, and then again in the final quatrain.
MW: You know those kids in high school, who would always ask the long questions to make themselves look smart? I always hated those kids.
CW: I always thought the good questions were the short ones. Like, “What do you think?”
MW: Or, “Why?”
CW: “Will you marry me?”
MW: “What are you wearing underneath that?”
SPIN: In “You’ll Come Running Back To Me”, there’s quite a lot of really fascinating background noise, beginning with Mark saying, I think, “Ira”? Can you tell me what that means?
CW: Have you ever heard of Ira Gershwin?
SPIN: I’ve heard of George Gershwin.
MW: See?
CW: Piss off.
SPIN: And I understand that on several of these tracks, Carey, you also wrote the music?
CW: Well, Mark can’t write lyrics. So he only likes songs that sound like they were written by somebody who can’t write lyrics.
MW: Like Kurt Cobain?
CW: So if I wanted to write lyrics with more than one verse, I had to write the music myself.
SPIN: The beat on the opening track, “I Know What You’re Doing,” which I guess you wrote. That’s the beat from “Mentally Ill in Amityville.” Isn’t it?
CW: Yep.
SPIN: A lot of times your melodies, or your basslines, or even the whole feel of your songs are—I guess you might say, reminiscent? Is that something you do purposely? Do you have a sense that you might be—imitating?
CW: Oh, totally. I mean, Mark will call me up and say, “I just wrote Daydream Believer, and a Radiohead melody.” There aren’t any new songs these days. Especially if you’re writing with only three chords. There’s no shame in it. Back in the day, it’s how everybody did it. (to MW) Right?
MW: I don’t know what the **** she’s talking about.
SPIN: There’s a lot that a band can do with technology these days: add echoes, cut-and-paste syllables in a vocal, bring an out-of-tune singer up to the right key. And I know a number of musicians have reacted to that by insisting on the one perfect take, refusing to use any of the bells and whistles, getting it down right, naturally.
CW: Well, we’re kind of like that. We can only really stand to do one take, usually. Otherwise Mark cries.
MW: Carey cries.
CW: But the difference is, our one take won’t be perfect. So then we have to go in and work with it.
MW: Like on “I Know What You’re Doing.” She only sang that “every time” right once. I had to cut and paste it, like, half a dozen times. And I don’t think I’ve ever heard her sing on key for three minutes straight.
CW: But I think there’s a certain honest y in that, you know? Doing the best you can with what God gave you?
MW: (to SPIN) So, what’s your story? You write songs, too?
SPIN: No, I---
MW: Play guitar?
SPIN: No.
MW: Any instruments? Sing?
SPIN: Not really.
MW: But you write articles about music?
SPIN: Yep.
MW: Huh.
SPIN. I dated a drummer once.
MW: Yeah?
SPIN: She was hot.