I really never saw Shannon Selberg as the poster boy for anything, aside from maybe one of the nastier forms of mental illness. As the voice of Minneapolis thrashers The Cows, he managed to swing requisite menace and a disarmingly arch, lowbrow wit at the same time, leveling both barrels at the oozing backalley/trailerpark underbelly of life. The ugly version of Americana Selberg wallowed in always used to strike me as a bit too extreme to represent reality (which, of course, was most of the fun); however, since the Cows split up, it seems like Selberg and America have been on the same road.
Take the first track on the second full-length from Selberg's first post-Cows project: "Army Brat" doesn't just nail the zeitgeist, it knocks it up and refuses to pay child support. Selberg hawks up lines like "I am an army brat/ My dick's a baseball bat/ That oil's gotta flow/ Cuz I say so, so so!" with utterly convincing belligerence, while ex-Swans/Foetus guitarist Norman Westberg crunches away like a T.Rex with a mouthful of Grape Nuts. As with everything Selberg's ever articulated in galvanic ultra-scumbag mode, you get the feeling he's either completely messing with you or sneaking up from behind with a loaded shotgun in his sweaty hands! If you laugh along with the song, you're aligning yourself with this maniac; if you ignore it, you're missing the point. Which puts it-- along with the Dead Kennedys' "Kill the Poor"-- in the ranks of the best sarcastic protest songs. But still: Shannon Selberg? A conscience?
Maybe not. All this newfound relevance doesn't imply that he's actually changed-- not for the better, at least. The Cows' concept of artistic development mainly involved learning to play their instruments; once they could claim some success on that front, they proceeded to tear down whatever they'd accomplished with a snowballing sense of self-parody a hell of a lot funnier than most. True to Selberg's primitivist intentions, it kept "art" at a safe distance. You'd think, though, that with a fresh start in a promising new band-- Westberg is ample replacement for Cows axeman Thor Eisentrager (minus the kickass rock name), and the John Fell/Eric Eble rhythmic axis is just as evil-- they wouldn't have that much to parody; they certainly don't have to lay it on this thick. And while the Heroine Sheiks still have a lot of things going for them, Selberg's recent keyboard fixation isn't one of them: When he's playing it like an actual instrument, as on the creeping noir narrative "Grab the Wheel", and during the frighteningly visceral pop violence of "Open You Up", it's good enough for flavor. As a noisemaker, though, it often sounds like a lump of plastic tossed around on the ocean of real skronk the Sheiks muster elsewhere.
While the band's leanings toward novelty actually complement some of the songs-- well-placed bicycle bells push their nigh-impossibly sleazy cover of Sonny Boy Williamson's "Good Morning Little Schoolgirl" into twilight-zone pedophilia-- they just as often take the edge off of Selberg's ferocity. The album's redneck-baiting final track, "Mas Suicide", has the makings of another sarcastic classic: Selberg growls "My life's a shotgun/ Without a sight"; arguments over "Freebird" escalate to homicide, etc. However, after a couple of wheezing synth interludes and unfortunate monkey-hoots from Selberg, the song loses enough of its razor focus to fade into another simple joke. Maybe it's just that over the past few years I've become desensitized by the flood of junk culture, but where Selberg once distinguished himself by perpetually sinking lower than America, in 2003, Uncle Sam's finally caught up.
