Honey Barbara – I-1Ø & W. Ave. CD Review
by Austin Rich

            So little is ever actually discussed about the relationship between the Artist and the consumer directly.  Some assumptions can be made, but for the most part the relationship is almost ignored entirely in the medium in which they communicate, and I find that a bit unsettling.  It's one thing to send out “shots in the dark” that you know will never be read (taking my own work, for example), but the tables turn when it becomes clear that this lone effort of some person to express themselves textually becomes a representation of who they are when he's no longer on the other end of the lens and the book closes, so to speak.  (The “textually” metaphor can even be stretched in another direction, to the point where the author begins to have an extreme case of performance anxiety if this goes on for too long… but I digress.)

            The point being, aside from the very obvious, I could really be anyone who merely creates a port for you to view me through where the show on the other side becomes anything of my choosing.  I could make up a whole set of personality quirks, throw in stories that never really happened, reference friends that don't exist, and mention music styles I don't really like all for the sake of a review and the careful reader will merely incorporate that into the mixture of fact & fiction I've already thrown in their direction.  As far as you know, I've written everything about music from an air-tight bunker in Thailand, receiving transmissions about music from the only source of communication I have with the outside world: the Internet.  I could be your next-door neighbor who endlessly screams at you when you're having sex too loud.

            For all you know, I could be your dad, trying to cure some sort of midlife crisis. 

            Honey Barbara knows this sort of thing all too well, they themselves casting out from the darkness of Texas with nothing save the CDR I received in the mail to explain what's going on.  The music offers little insight into the artist's lives, or at least the interesting aspects of it.  Maybe the sentiment and analytical dissections of mundane life offered within is fabricated to create an image that isn't real?  Or perhaps they are so honest they assume no one will trust them.  It's hard to see where they're coming from, really.  (And even if we could, I have a feeling they'd still be hiding in the shadows - or at least the basement - anyway.)

            The music perplexes as it educates.  I say this because in the few days that I've had it in my CD player non-stop, I'd gone back and forth on them almost every time I push the “play” button.  There are the usual instruments you'd expect to find: synths, drums (live… or programmed?), some guitar, some bass, & vocals.  But there's something else in there that's slightly disturbing.  Perhaps the combined efforts of these instruments working in unison?  Or the fact that each one seems to cloak their own efforts by bringing out those of the others in some strange attempt to strike a comfortable balance between everything without anything taking the forefront?  It's hard to say, really.  The music itself sways and dives, doubles back on itself and attempts to find some other place to meander when it's all said and done. 

            The day the CD arrived in the mail I immediately performed a surface listen in an attempt to figure out what I was getting myself into.  (I'd received e-mail from this guy, asking me if I wanted a review copy of his bands CD, and not wanting to disappoint, I figured I'd dive right into it.)  I listened to the first couple of tracks straight through as I got ready to go to the bar that night, then scanned through the remaining tracks randomly, trying to get a feel for style and genre.  I had never heard of Honey Barbara, and every thing I'd seen written about them had them pegged as “indescribable”.  On the surface, I couldn't really deny it either: there were no punky guitars, no down-and-out country lyrics, no annoying techo beats, no folky protests, and no gothy textures.  I kept thinking to myself, “Well, shit, this sure makes my job harder.” 

            But isn't that what we all dream of?  An album that challenges our ideas of what music is?  Something that doesn't sound like everything else we've heard a million times before?  I've longed for ages to hear something that grabbed me and pulled me into a world that wasn't like the radio (or my own record collection, for that matter).  For those of us that are suffering from late-stage music-addiction, it's always the search for something new.  But new isn't just a new band, or a new LP, but “new” in the sense that it aurally sounds like nothing you've heard before.  A secret that you discovered, to be shared and passed around with a wink and a nod to your friends at parties.  “Hey, you really should check this out.”  “Really?”  “Yeah…” 

            But in that respect, I was disappointed.  For all the newness and indescribable something that lived beneath the surface, Honey Barbara did not deliver that excitement of being the first kid on your block to discover punk.  I wanted to find something that compared to discovering Negativland or The Residents; instead, I found something else.

            What, then?  Hard to say.  There's elements of The Flaming Lips (as implied by the second and third songs, “Bad Day” & “Sleep Late”, which both draw small but noticeable lyrical similarities to the Lips own song “Bad Days”, something that may or may not have been intentional), but while the Lips are lyrically storytellers of the absurd & bizarre, Honey Barbara are forever attempting to shed new light on the mundane, making the act of calling in sick for work to get an extra day off a criminal act worthy of whispering, “Don't tell on us,” in a way that not only implies something sinister considering more than one of them is doing it.  (Then again, it's entirely possible there's only one person, referring to himself as “us”, making the song creepier…) 

            I've struggled though the album itself many times now, trying to find out where it's going & what it's trying to convey, but in all my efforts I keep coming back to the same conclusion: I can't put my finger on where these guys are coming from.  Which is probably their point.  At times there seems to be an African style percussion creeping in… at others, a slight Jamaican influence.  Here and there a twangy bit seems to creep in, and at other times there appears to be that sort of atmospheric type synth you'd associate with one of those “mood” CDs you buy in New Age stores.  All of this confusion, this idea that they are putting me on to bend and flex their own image created through the only means I have to view them, only makes me want to work harder at creating a more solid image of myself for others to perceive.  Maybe that was the point?  The goal being to give me something to work on myself?  It's something to think about. 

            If that's the case, then it's the greatest concept album I've ever heard.

1Ø/1Ø/Ø1

For more information about Honey Barbara, check out their label's site at www.emigre.com.  I believe the album mentioned above will be available in November of 2ØØ1.