You may remember Chris Knox from his old band, the Tall Dwarfs, as they were spawned from the same New Zealand indie label, Flying Nun, as the Verlaines, the Chills, and the Clean. If you're unfamiliar with these bands, call up Steve Malkmus, Lou Barlow, Ira Kaplan and countless others who've learned plenty from Knox and his Flying Nun mates. Along with other hugely influential but semi-obscure lo-fi innovators such as Young Marble Giants, Knox has done more with merely a voice, synthesizer, simple guitar, and drum machines than most could do with an orchestra. Knox, however, is no longer notorious for onstage self-laceration (he used to carve himself up with whatever jagged objects happened to be lying around); at 47, he rarely puts himself under the knife anymore.
These days, Knox often tours in support of the bands he and the Tall Dwarfs helped to inspire, like Yo La Tengo, for instance. In concert, he dresses like your average beach bum. He wears that executive secretary/Madonna-esque headgear with the portable microphone. This way he can float freely, sometimes crooning dementedly to individual audience members. Knox will even persuade fans to come up and play his simple songs while he dashes off for a quick piss. These healthy bits of forced egalitarianism make the Chris Knox live experience a shared one, whether you like it or not. And that's a good thing. Iggy would be proud.
Upon hearing Knox's latest, Beat, it seems he's still most happy when exploring the shadowy nooks and crannies of the human psyche. Knox revels in the dark psychological spaces that most songwriters, even those considered "confessional," conveniently avoid. But there's an element of humor underpinning all this too, sick as it may sometimes be.
As expected, the music itself is just about as minimal as straight tonal composition will allow. Knox uses his limited technical abilities to great advantage, banging out a few chords on the electric piano or guitar. The beat is usually supplied by a drum machine, or sometimes nothing at all. Knox loves getting across simple pop melodies, too, which serve as a great foil for his pessimistic lyrics. Occasionally, he'll interject some stabbing fuzz guitar into the mix, or hang a nice, thick feedback curtain over a verse or two. What more do you really need?
The subject matter Knox tackles is, on the surface, what you might expect of a mad genius pushing 50: twisted love songs, ruminations on aging, human nature, mortality. Sometimes the lyrics conform to the overall minimalist ethic, as Knox may simply repeat a couple of lines, as on "It's Love." ("I need you/ I need you every single day.") Often, though, he juxtaposes the complex, extended lyric with conventional pop changes, like on "What Do We Do with Love," a cute little song about the myriad ways people exploit and abuse this strange and often dangerous phenomenon known as "love." "Everyone's Cool" examines the human animal's self-deluding assumption that we're all so damn special and unique. Knox suggests that we're basically all just a slightly different version of the same self-obsessed, egotistical, over-emotional wanker.
But the most affecting song has to be "Becoming Something Other," about a man coming to terms with his father being a wheelchair-bound vegetable: the old man is paralyzed, unable to speak coherently, and trying to express to his son that he's dying. Knox spares none of the ugly details of this encounter, and it's damn disturbing to say the least. There's nothing more than an eerie keyboard drone in the background, and the chords shift in achingly slow increments-- aptly representative of the father's slow but steady mental and physical deterioration.
As you can see, Knox can be just as cynical, bitchy and depressing as he is charming. But, hey, that's why we love him. So don't count on Knox becoming the new guest host on Live with Regis anytime soon. Free of the debilitating, art-killing curse of mainstream success, Knox proves he's still a vital voice reverberating from rock's fertile underground-- much like he was twenty years ago. What's next? Hard to say. Maybe someday he'll learn to play an instrument. But let's hope not.
