A Perfect Circle - eMOTIVe


Friends of the show will tell you that i've called myself heavy-handed on several occassions, but i don't have Maynard James Keenan money. He's Wreck-it Ralph. He straight up paid to have A Perfect Circle release an entire album of covers of protest songs on election day. That's what "executive producer" means. 

Jesus fucking christ! Toy piano and whispering for the opening Crucifix cover. It's your choice, peace or annihilation. Imagine the nuclear wasteland version of Imagine. It doesn't let up either, just one gut wrenching soliloquy from the barren wasteland after another, and we end on the Maynard Choir's version of Joni Mitchell's Fiddle and the Drum. I dare you to smile. Obviously, we're not dead. A whole lot of American soldiers and people from the middle east are, though. 

Would this album still be as downright soul crushingly depressive if Kerry had won? I don't know. Probably not, it might feel like wearing one of those world series losers tshirts they have to make and then ship overseas because manufacturing isn't a spontaneous convenience like we delude ourselves into thinking. Still though, an album of protest songs during a war (even if you don't call it that) is rarely inane. We do a whole lot of stuff we should protest all the time, and now is as good/bad a time as any to pull it out and lean into the pain. 

This is as tough as it gets. The next two albums are pretty down on our country, but in a more digestible form. If you can get through eMOTIVe then you can deal with most anything. Oh, you'll be totally and permanently messed up by the end, but you'll have a great story to tell. My favorite part is the reinterpreted propaganda posters by Steven R. Gilmore. Relax, everything is fine, we've got it all under control....

Part 10

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