Four vans destroyed and sold for scrap metal. Five guitar amps crackled, hissed, and went silent, exhaling a final puff of smoke. An irreplacable vintage keyboard face down at the bottom of a flight of stairs, 13 keys cracked and lifted, never to make a sound again.
A string of misfortune seemed to follow the five young men comprising Michigan's Mason Proper (named for an obscure phrase relating to Freemasonry) last year as they toured in support of their 2007 debut album, There is a Moth in Your Chest. Each time they packed up their belongings to head to another town, they would search their bags and equipment for arcane symbols, unexplained objects, anything that might prove to be evidence of the curse of unluckiness they seemed to be living under. "It was a ritual we took up half-jokingly," singer and primary songwriter Jonathan Visger said, "but the second part of the joke was always that if we ever found anything, it would certainly explain a lot."
The band powered on through the mishaps and continued to play as many of the shows as they could make it to, despite sending van after van to the junkyard. The early shows were energetic and bubbling with enthusiasm, but as the band encountered more and more trouble they became progressively wilder and more dangerously frenetic, coping by learning to take a sick delight in watching the chaos around them. They were in the grip of mental instability. During this time period, keyboardist Matt Thomson would often disappear for hours at a time without telling anyone where he was going. He even missed the beginning of several shows, including a well-documented incident at Denver, Colorado's Monolith Festival, where he disappeared into the mountains. Around this time a wild-eyed and bruised Jonathan was quoted as saying, "I'm disappointed if I don't shed a little blood by the end of a show," when asked about his wild and self-destructive performances.
The band's most fervent supporters are a group known as "The New Destroyers," named after an unreleased song the band retired from their live set after noticing that things would mysteriously break whenever they played it. Some of the New Destroyers cracked the coded messages woven into the artwork of Moth, and through it discovered the secret website the band had created, allowing anonymous communication with the band via the same code.
Shortly after they began using it, several unsettling coded messages came in threateningly alluding to private matters in the band's lives. Shaken by the amount of information the person seemed to have, Mason Proper temporarily shut down the site, but not before one last message came in; it decoded as: KEEP GOING CURSESTELLO.
Convinced that this was a reference to the Elvis Costello-like glasses Jonathan wore through this time period, bassist Zac Fineberg and guitarist Brian Konicek refused to do any further touring with what they now suspected was the cursed item. Jonathan refused to destroy them, saying they had sentimental value and that he would just lock them away instead, but drummer Garrett Jones, the most superstitious of them all, stole them in the night and burned them in Zac's fire pit.
After the allegedly cursed glasses were gone, the band decided to turn over a new leaf and look to the future, hopefully leaving their dark past behind them. They met with producer Chris Coady (TV on the Radio, the Yeah Yeah Yeahs, Blonde Redhead), and with him selected 10 songs from a pool of 30 they had to choose from, aiming to make a very cohesive album, with a tone that reflected the band's collective state of mind as accurately as possible. They rented a small, empty house for a month and recorded the album, and Jonathan met up with Chris again at Carriage House Studios to mix what would become Olly Oxen Free (on the same console the Pixies' "Doolittle" was mixed on).
While some of the songs on Olly Oxen Free do update the dense, electronically-enhanced rock sound the band wielded recklessly on it's debut (which are sure to please longtime fans), it is the times when the band veers off into entirely new territory that are the most intriguing. On "Point A to Point B," nearly all the band's trademark noisiness is gone, while Jonathan sings "In past lives I was wealthy, so probably unhappy. Oh, I'm so glad I died," over a bouncy beat, and a sparse bed of bass and guitar ambience, before opening up to a beautifully simple chorus of, "I swore to myself last time was the last time." The band chose to close the record with "Safe for the Time Being," a song that had surprised the band by becoming an instant live favorite in the months before. A post-apocalyptic slow burner that stays sparse with only a heartbeat kick drum, thin guitar, and the most dynamic vocal melody the band has ever penned, until it explodes at the end in a grand wall of fuzz.
Olly Oxen Free will be out September 23rd on New York's Dovecote Records.
written by Lewis Muzynski, band friend and historian.
Related links:
Mason Proper (official site)
Mason Proper on Myspace
Dovecote Records
Carousel! Carousel!
Mason Proper Lyrics
Jump to: Overall Meaning ↴ Line by Line Meaning ↴
well I don't let that stop me.
I keep tipping my hat as beauties pass
and wispy wonders watch through the rafters.
There's no need to be scared,
they're watching over our exquisite black tie affair.
Give me carousel, make me six, maybe seven
in the red rays of lazy days
We all laugh because that's how we're raised.
Don't ask questions kids just laugh
and don't ask us
when you wonder why the sun burns
or where the clocks learned
how to control rising falling
bodies all the clouds clothe.
I don't know where.
Woke today, we all felt the same
sleepy strange and sad
Where do we stand?
so ends the ball, we're all very small
memories got blurred
Oh every word is gone.
Now the ghosts have gone onto a different place
Oh every word is gone
Now the ghosts have gone, we grow a different face
Dead, wrong.
Staring at four walls.
The sun comes up it's a new day
and we're not laughing anymore, anymore.
We found the fountain dry
stop kidding ourselves
the way that we grow, and later we go
The sun comes up it's a new day,
and we're not laughing
anymore. The lyrics of Mason Proper's song Carousel! Carousel! brings forth a sense of existentialism where the singer grapples with the reality of life and tries to make sense of it all. The song starts with the singer looking up at the sky, which has turned grey, but it does not deter him from continuing to live his life. As he tips his hat at beauties passing by, he watches as the world goes about its way, and the wonders of the world continue to exist despite the chaos in life.
The song then moves to a black-tie affair with a carousel, a symbolic representation of the cycles of life, where the singer wants to be surrounded by the beauty of the world. He understands that the world is beyond comprehension and humans can not understand it. The lyrics then take a melancholic turn as the singer realizes how memories can get blurred and how every word is gone. He compares the ephemeral nature of human existence to ghosts that move on to a different place.
The song highlights the struggle to understand life, the meaning of existence, and the regret that comes with realizing that everything is temporary. The chorus 'The sun comes up, it's a new day, and we're not laughing anymore' is reflective of the melancholic realization that life is finite, and one must make the most of it while it lasts.
Line by Line Meaning
When I look at the sky and blue goes grey,
Even when things don't go as planned and good things become bad, I don't give up.
well I don't let that stop me.
I keep moving forward despite the obstacles in my way.
I keep tipping my hat as beauties pass
I honor and appreciate the beauty that passes me by.
and wispy wonders watch through the rafters.
I'm fascinated by the unknown and the mysteries of the world.
There's no need to be scared,
Don't be scared, it's going to be okay.
they're watching over our exquisite black tie affair.
The guardians are protecting and caring for our special event.
Give me carousel, make me six, maybe seven
I want to go on the carousel and keep going around.
I'll watch them popping overhead
I'll watch the things going over my head brimming with energy.
in the red rays of lazy days
I'll see the spectacle against the sun's low rays, emblematic of the lethargy of the times.
We all laugh because that's how we're raised.
We all laugh as it's ingrained in our nature and upbringing.
Don't ask questions kids just laugh
Don't overthink things, just enjoy the moment and laugh.
and don't ask us
And don't expect us to answer.
when you wonder why the sun burns
When you question why things happen, like the sun burning, we don't have the answers.
or where the clocks learned
We don't know how time learned to control itself.
how to control rising falling
We don't know how time regulates the passing of days and nights.
bodies all the clouds clothe.
We don't know how or why clouds form and take shape like they do.
I don't know where.
I don't know the answer to where we came from or where we're going.
Woke today, we all felt the same
Today, we all woke up feeling similar emotions.
sleepy strange and sad
We feel tired, confused, and unhappy.
Where do we stand?
We don't know what our place is in the world.
so ends the ball, we're all very small
The event has ended and we realize how unimportant we are in the grand scheme of things.
memories got blurred
Our memories have become hazy and hard to recall.
Oh every word is gone.
Our words and memories have faded away with time.
Now the ghosts have gone onto a different place
Those who have passed away have moved on to a new place.
Now the ghosts have gone, we grow a different face
As time passes, we change and become different people.
Dead, wrong.
We feel like we're dead or not living our lives correctly.
Staring at four walls.
We feel trapped and confined, with no way out.
The sun comes up it's a new day
Each day is a new opportunity to start over.
and we're not laughing anymore, anymore.
We don't find the joy in life that we used to.
We found the fountain dry
We realize that something that brought us happiness is gone and won't come back.
stop kidding ourselves
We need to face reality instead of pretending everything is okay.
the way that we grow, and later we go
We grow and change throughout our lives and eventually die.
The sun comes up it's a new day,
Every morning is a new opportunity to start over.
and we're not laughing anymore, anymore.
We can't find the joy in life like we used to.
Contributed by Carter I. Suggest a correction in the comments below.