Alden Penner

Ghost of Creaky Crater b/w Espair EP

(Art School Dropout; 2005)

By Aaron Newell | 19 October 2007

The legend will forever be told as so:

Alden: Les dûdes, we gotta get up and go record that song for that guy who asked us to record that song for his little label that puts out 7”’s and not much else.

Nique: Non! Later we sing, maintenant we sleep!

J’aime: Australienne girls are so little and cute that I must to go back to sleep so I can dream about the cute little Australienne girls.

Alden: But hömies, we said we’d record this. He already drew up the cover art on that napkin last night. Do the good thing, we can nap later, we don’t even have to remove our jammies. Please may we?

Nique: Non! I drank many wine, I remember no napkin.

J’aime: Fat Joe would sleep in this situation.

Alden: But féllas he’s waiting and it’s already ten-seven o’clock minus une half-hour. We have almost entirely wasted the four-track rental.

Nique: Yo J’aime you wanna fuckin form a rap group or something later on?

J’aime: So, um, Messieur Alden. We’re busy tonight after sleeping is fini, killa.

Alden: Like, merde, guys, and I worked out this great little Beatles-ey pop number for us to play, it barely sounds at all like our old stuff. It’s jangly and happy and ploddy and it’s got shakers. I wrote the hook in French, sing it in a sweet little falsetto, it’s about how I can see the moon in the walls and the ceiling, faux-stargazing. I tried to contrast the chorus with the verses’ honky-ish anglais lyrics about how we’re all dirt-bound, how the truth is in the craters of the earth, how all we have to do to find ourselves is climb right in. You know, the whole song sort of highlights the exoticness of the human will to become a celestial being, hence the French, and then sort of gets on some Platonic cave analogy shit since we’ll never really see the stars and sky and moon and stuff for what they really are, we can only imagine their images as glowy stickers in our bedrooms, you know? Yet we still aspire to ascend to their level—see the irony? And then I bring it back down to reality, which is, essentially, death. There are ghosts in our skin man, it’s what we’re all made of. I did this for us guys. I encapsulated the human condition in a lo-fi pop song, and it’s catchy, too. This is probably the most complete artistic restatement of the album’s whole death schtick that we could hope for, at least I think so. What do you guys think? Want me to play it? Cømrades? Ecoutez-vous?

Nique: zzz.

J’aime: You’re a fucking le retard.

Alden: What’ll I do without you guys there to turn the knobs on the electric things?

J’aime: There will then be no turning of knobs, obviously, since that is what we do, obviously, and we obviously will be asleep or rapping.

Alden: Just so you know, I’m gonna put a really nice, sweet, quaint, almost traditionally-Parisien home recording on the b-side to show that I can do more than just make garage-pop unlike you two scutters.

J’aime: Whatever, dork. Anyway: Dannii or Kylie?

Alden: Kylie.

J’aime: WRONG. You’re out of the band.