The mind is an amazing thing. To this day, for all our technical know-how and scientific explorations, we still understand very little about how it works. Still, there's no denying its amazing capabilities. From sheer storage capability and the power for reasoning, to the oft-discussed theories of telepathy and the strange but undeniably incredible stunts of your average savant, it seems the brain's powers are close to endless. Perhaps its most amazing feat of all, though, is its ability to convince itself of things it simply knows cannot be true. Like the urban legends about an alcoholic woman with nothing else to live for who carries around her dead baby, cradling it and cooing its name, convinced it's still alive. Or the child who watches his father beat his mother, but chooses not to acknowledge it, finding it easier to believe it never happened than to deal with the repercussions. Or the thirty-year-old man who insists that professional wrestling is real. Or the music critic that convinces himself that there's no vocalist in Fin Fang Foom.
And why not? The music on Texture, Structure, and the Condition of Moods is interesting, if not necessarily innovative. Granted, this guitar/bass/drums rock trio is hung up on that whole juxtaposition of the fast and slow, and the abrasive and quiet. And yes, they've been duped into thinking a Casio keyboard part here and there will make them seem sensitive. Still, the instrumentation is competent, and on occasion, some of these songs are even sort of interesting.
Fin Fang Foom might not be up to the U.S. Maple standard for disjointed rock music, but they're certainly a step up from most of the generic crap that ends up festering in my review pile for weeks on end. Certainly, a decent group like this would recognize the good things they've got going for them, and wouldn't go and fuck everything up by adding vocals, right? Especially not really retching, grating, off-key vocals that bring to mind that forbidden e-word. Nope. There's just no reason. And certainly, they wouldn't have an equally incompetent back-up vocalist, showing up from time to time to take things from bad to simply unbearable. Nah, they'd know better.
And even if, for some godforsaken reason, they insisted on adding vocals, certainly they'd manage to find something less cliché than, oh, I dunno, "Angel love, why so thin and pale?/ Don't you realize your soul is for sale?" Right? They would, wouldn't they?
It seems safe to say that any group competent enough to master the tricky stops and starts and the left-field time changes of songs like "At Age 23" and "Iron Coat" (two of Texture, Structure and the Convocation of Moods' more intriguing moments) would also realize that lyrics like, "Laughing at my frustration/ Realizing the truth/ No fear of confrontation/ A few more words then we're through," are painful in their mediocrity, especially when followed by a refrain that goes, "I scrape my scars again/ My blood my one best friend." And so, like an emotionally deranged 15-year-old who fervently insists that there's still a Santa Claus, I maintain that Fin Fang Foom has no vocalist.
After all, I don't want to be mean. Contrary to popular belief, we critics don't like writing negative reviews. And these guys do have potential. They're like Sweep the Leg Johnny, just without the saxophone, slightly more structured and a lot less interesting. Maybe one day, they'll recognize the error of their ways, focus on the instrumentals, take the music down that road marked complexity they all seem to be eyeing with a bit of trepidation, and who knows, maybe they'll be worth a recommendation. In the meantime, I'll just continue to enjoy these solid instrumentals thanks to the amazing power of self-deception.
