Thanks to the "Survivor" reality show, surviving no longer means to continue living. "Survivor" has come to mean vanquishing all opposition and standing tall, but entirely alone, on a pile of dirty cash. By this revised definition, Pete Astor, frontman of the Wisdom of Harry, is not a survivor; he is a subsisting hanger-on.
Astor cannot be judged in such starkly totalitarian terms. As a member of the Loft, he created a band that permanently teetered on the edge of utter collapse. A song like "Up the Hill Backwards" belongs in the permanent collection of precipitous art. Like the Fire Engines' Davey Henderson, Astor's work has a subdued surrealism to it, and as such, is so destined for esotericism. The Weather Prophets, Astor's next band, achieved little but acclaim before two band members went off to join country-rock chancers the Rockingbirds.
So will the Wisdom of Harry commercially succeed where Astor's other acts have sunk? Initial signs are hardly hopeful. The fact that the band's early material (compiled later as The Stars of Super 8), was issued by labels tinier than TV dinners and garnered virtually no support isn't exactly encouraging. But to those attuned to quirky soundscaping and compelling verbal juxtapositions, House of Binary-- the Wisdom of Harry's second album-- is a lo-fi mansion of Newport opulence.
Throughout House of Binary, Astor's long-recognized appreciation for Lou Reed's lyrics and garage-band musical forthrightness is blended with an appreciation of the Rephlex roster. Two tracks immediately arrest you with their skewed pop confection-- the very Beta Band and exceedingly compilable "Coney Island of Your Mind," and the sickly scheming psychedelia of "Caesar Boots." That these two tracks are sequenced back-to-back, and so early in the album, confirms Astor's confidence in his talents.
"March of the Otaku" follows them, and bountifully exhibits Astor's supremacy of keyboards and twisted ambionics. As slow and low as the track is, you'd never want to hear it on a chill out compilation-- the Dead Can Dance choir and fairground organ melodies exhume too many repressed memories of childsnatchers, spiked cotton candy, and "Tales from the Crypt"-induced nightmares. "Quite an achievement, Mr. Astor," the critic mumbles, as his mom coaxes him out from behind two lacrosse sticks, a pile of dirty Converses, and the broken power supply of an Atari 7200, abandoned to the relentless entropy of his bedroom closet.
As if to redeem himself for the previous terror, "Theme from Eggboy" channels the mojos of Lee "Scratch" Perry, Augustus Pablo, Robert Johnson, and the Boards of Canada, and is just overwhelming in its beguiling voodoo pull. Astor gets confessional during the ambient torch song, "Boxed": "Looks like I'm boxed again/ But it's okay," sounds less like an assessment of a poorly parked vehicle than it does Astor's resignation to being sparsely acclaimed, pigeon-holed, and woefully unrecompensed for his gift for writing genuinely sympathetic songs.
During the deep, rolling glamour of "Disco C," Astor lets us in on a hush-hush secret-- the Bates' Motel has been throwing Summer of '88 house parties! The lonely, mama-lovin' Norman shows himself to be quite a connoisseur of bass-heavy garage classics like Don Carlos' "Alone," Kym Mazelle's moody "Useless," and Jamie Principal's "Baby Wants to Ride." With such a snappy hook, marketing execs surely can't withhold publicity funds by confusing House of Binary with another Rusted Root release, can they?
It's not within my power to send House of Binary up to the cash-raking heights of Destiny's Child's own definition of "Survivor"-- and I get the sense that Astor wouldn't want that, anyway. I can only recommend that we, as listeners, make the effort to send it up there. Whatever the accountants' bottom line will finally show, Astor's concerns, surreally masked or not, are far loftier than the banal accruing of disposable funds. Towards the close of the album, Astor states, "I'm going to make my life right/ Going to write to everyone/ Tell them what I've done/ Gonna make my life right/ Gonna stand on a high building/ Gonna scream against the sky/ Gonna beg for forgiveness/ Try to make it all right." Hey, Pete, no need for apology, mate. We know what you've done: you've done just fine.
