Nemesis Online (Legendary Pink Dots)

chaostrophy 23 <mbapst@indiana.edu>

Here are my attempts at transcriptions for the lyrics not listed in the
booklet...

Dissonance

Driving the pack, from the rear, with a trumpet, with an axe. Driving to the
precipice, windswept and wet with starving neglect. Eternally carving my cause
on a landscape that's blighted and scorched. I'm blighted and scorched with the
truth, we don't listen, we shoot, from the blindside. It's a landslide, but in
hindsight, I thought it was easier. But it's all much too late to turn back, I
must face an eternally fateless way in a place where my orders echo my torturous
ghosts. In a space with no windows, I'm counting the touch. All this time to
reflect on my crimes to humanity. I'm screaming profanities, just give me a
chance to start over again. I confess, yes, I'll do it again.

A Sunset for a Swan

Johnny with the roving eyes sits bored upon the riverside, as Juliet, his future
bride, jumps naked in the water. Figure 8s? and scuba dives deep down, she's
blowing suicide. She squeaks and metamorphosizes movie stars and (???).
Johnny's staying serious, his face looks kind of frozen, one eye is completely
closed, the other is wide open. It swivels from a sunset to a swan. It weeps
for every goddamn thing that's wrong. When Johnny's holding Juliet, it's like I
hold my cigarette. I squeeze it, choosing to forget the warning on the carton.
I flick it from the window ledge, snuff it on the waterbed. The black smoke
rises overhead, then settles over (???). I am staying serious, my face is kind
of frozen. One eye is completely closed, and one eye's staying open. It
swivels from a sunset to a swan. It weeps for every goddamn thing that's wrong.
When Johnny's holding Juliet, it's like he holds his cigarette. He hangs her
from the window ledge, and blows her over (???). She (???), she turns a
cartwheel on my head. I grit my teeth, put up with it, because it's all for
fun.

Ghost

Blood on the door, blood on the stairs, blood on the floor, blood in my hair,
nothing is sure, my visions (???), I'm sick to the core, and walking alone.
Nothing is real, no one's a whole, nothing to feel except for the cold.

Under Your Wheels

Your white eyes, they never judge me, they just fix upon a place that's far
away, deep inside you, and I wonder will I ever have the chance to walk there
too? But you're tongue-tied, you always have been. Our conversations, they
have been far too few. No going back now, at least we have the time now to
explore what's happening deep down inside you, what's going on here inside me
too. We're not dock-tied, we're individuals, and angel, all I asked was "set me
free". But not this free.

--
chaostrophy/////23 --------------------------|
mbapst@indiana.edu/icq#4433052 --------------|
http://chaostrophy.home.ml.org --------------|

"...spreading sores from head to claws
chewed senseless as the hot rain pours
like molten lead from cold red towers..."

-the legendary pink dots,
'premonition 13'

Antron S. Meister

Counting down to the decade's end, the Pink Dots have surpassed themselves
- again. Nemesis Online is perhaps their most completely satisfying record
since the wondrous 9 Lives to Wonder of 1994 vintage. Certainly the
interim album releases From Here You'll Watch The World Go By, Hallway Of
The Gods (and also the most recent Tear Garden collaboration with Skinny
Puppy/Download) had their moments of excellence, but it's here that the
fully- rounded feel of a classic manifests.

The group are at their collective best when each element individual members
bring combine across the spectrum into a series of thoroughly
worked-through ideas. There's the typical eclectic sources filtered through
the playful Dots musical worldview - the cod-lounge score of "Jasz"; the
breakbeat run-through of "Abracadabra", the gentle lullaby melody of the
closing "Slaapliedje" - but what shines in particular is the tight cohesion
of a band who seem to spend half their career on tour or in the studio,
with a dizzying array of solo projects and collaborations in which to
excercise their individual proclivities. What results is a constant flow of
ideas working off each other in a dialectical cycle of ideas, motifs and
(sometimes self)quotations, evolved into a sequence of songs each of which
fits the whole picture as a piece contributing more than the sum of
occasionaly considerable parts.

All of which of is a long-winded way of saying that Nemesis is a phenomenal
record, one which grows with each listen, holding key moments such as the
reflective "Under Your Wheels," with its shift into ambient Kosmische
synthesis, the sinister "Ghost" or the post-apocalyptic "As Long As It's
Purple And Green", which reveals a certain kindred spirit to that of Philip
K. Dick and/or Roger Zelazny's eerie tales of everyday life after the fall
of civilization (see Dr. Bloodmoney, Or How We Got Along After The Bomb by
the former, and Deus Irae by both). The album's moment of perfection comes
with "A Sunset for A Swan," which cartwheels from ukelele-strum to motorik
groove via some wonderfully distorted bass interjections, all underlying an
exquisitely Ka-Spellian semi-love story, both archly lyrical and subtly
twisted at the same time.

Likewise with the almost-Rock-out "Is It Something I Said" - guitars
deployed with verve by Edwin Von Trippenhof (good to see the newest member
entering into the spirit of the Dots' alias game), scattered sax lines,
with echo and delay layered wisely rather than haphazardly. By contrast
"Zoo" is largely an electronic affair, bleeps and beats and samples
providing the backdrop to more of Edward's science fiction, this time from
the perspective of a human captured and on display in an alien enclosure,
awaiting rescue. The middle section concludes with the kind semi-acoustic
moment the Dots excel at - "Fate's Faithful Punchline" - which soars
between existential despair and hope, never quite fully acheiving either,
but stirring the possibilities along the way, and slips into the waltz-time
"Cheating The Shadow" in a paranoid return to the edgy spine-chillers of
earlier days.

What makes this album a classic of the Pink Dots' considerable opus is an
indefinable sense of collective cohesion, the accumulated meshing of talent
along a convergent stream of consciousnesses. It was originally to be
titled Zeitgeist - which would have been appropriate, but dull - and this
is perhaps a pointer to the band's appeal. No universal truths, sardonic,
detached observations or slavish recipes for salvation doled out in song
form, but dissonant voices in a morass of commercialism and hedonistic
self-aggrandizement, shot through with an optimism which defies the fake
version(s) on offer from the mainstream. A dream of what life might be like
from an alien perspective - where the alien is human.

-Antron S. Meister-

"Crepescular Malice" <dark_aurora@angelfire.com>

I find "Nemesis Online," to be an absolutely fascinating album... it is
probably my fourth favorite, behind Any Day Now, The Maria Dimension, and
Hallway of the Gods. It gets better with every listen; in my humble opinion
this album requires 4 "serious" listens, before you have it. By "serious"
listens, I mean not as background music, but rather, you are reclined, with
an open mind.

The album starts off with "Dissonance," which is one of my favorite cuts. I
think this track should prove to anyone who doubts (I don't know anyone like
this) that the Dots could be a huge band if they wanted, for this somber,
liquid song is as accessible as anything you will find on "alternative"
radio. In a just world, this would be a huge "alternative" hit, and the
Dots would have their due, but would we, or even the Dots, want that? I
wonder.

There are a few tracks here that don't touch off anything special in me.
"As Long As It's Green and Purple," seems rather contrived and silly to me.
"Under Your Wheels," is seriously forgettable, and "Cheating the Shadow" is
a pale shadow of greater songs of this kind like "Break Day," or "The Key To
Heaven."

Besides these, the rest of the album is excellent. "Ghost" is appropriately
chilling. "Abracadabra" and "Zoo,"-- I feel the urge to cry out, "Break out
the glowsticks and pacifiers, children!" But seriously I love those two
songs; "Zoo," in particularly urges me to move my body in a manner that H.
P. Lovecraft and his sycophant-sidekick August Derleth aptly described as
"undulating."

"Slaapliedje" is a lullaby if I ever heard one, and an excellent one at
that. It is very beautiful, as is "Sunset For a Swan," but in a different
manner. It took me two listens before I grasped that "Sunset for a Swan" was
a brilliant song, jerking me around between the unique splaying and prosaic
strum-strum-strum. Wonderful track.

Perhaps the greatest heartbreak on this album, though, is "Fate's Faithful
Punchline." This is a solemn, stately, beautiful song, but there were
specific moments in the song where I felt an ache in my heart, I wanted the
song to "swell" into oen of those swooning, grandiose choruses... but alas
it did not, and I feel it could have been the best track on the abums if it
had. Oh well. But this is one of their greatest albums, I feel, and if this
is the direction they are headed in, I, for one, am truly excited.