Eric Copeland writes slippery, chameleonic songs. Sifting through the accrued, multi-format bric-a-brac of this Black Dice member’s voluminous solo catalogue can feel unnervingly magical, like turning over the acorn cupped in your palm and discovering it was always a quarter. Merry hooks are conked far beyond delirium, gnawed upon by effects, reshuffled mercilessly to accommodate inappropriate tempos. And while it’s often remarked that no one experiences a single piece of music the same way twice, this is especially true for the entries in Copeland’s canon.
With very rare exceptions—“U.F.O.s Over Vampire City” from 2011’s *Whorehouse Blues *EP, for example - vocals in Copeland’s work have been little more than floating scraps. Black Bubblegum upends this status quo somewhat, with Copeland’s voice foregrounded. The LP is ramshackle, blithe, and relatively accessible—a Blues Explosion to its predecessors’ Pussy Galore. A wobbly, piping effect guides the jaunty, absurdist “Fuck It Up,” a junkyard anthem worthy of pre-1993 Beck or Ween. Grease-fire guitars and roadhouse pianos goose “Don’t Beat Your Baby,” while “Cannibal World” dips a foot into reggae, astride watery, wavy effects that suggest a hybrid of steel drums and synthesizers.
Even though the surface is smoother and and the vocals less garbled than usual, it’d be a mistake to read *Bubblegum *as a true unmasking. Filters swaddle Copeland’s voice throughout, distorting and distending it but stopping short of intelligibility; lyrically, he’s striking a tricky balance between deadpan nihilism and pop troubadour nostalgia. Nothing is revealed; the mystery continues.
