Helicopter Helicopter, By Starlight
I have a thing for catharsis; it’s comforting to think that, if you manage to get yourself together, you can just say fuck it and start over. That’s what I think the new Helicopter Helicopter album is about, in a way. It’s a concept album without any pretension, that works on all sorts of levels. It’s about rebirth and exploration of childhood themes; it’s about the things that scare us, and fascinate us. And, dammit, it’s really good, too.
The album’s first track, “And Just Once,” is more or less a typical rock number that wouldn’t have been out of place on alternative radio in, say, 1995. Actually, 1995 is an interesting time, because that’s when a lot of alternative bands tried to recapture childhood (with varying degrees of success), on albums like Schoolhouse Rock Rocks! and Saturday Morning Cartoons’ Greatest Hits. And while I could listen to Pavement’s “No More Kings” or Mary Lou Lord’s version of “Sugar Sugar” all day, every day, and not get sick of them, it’s nice to hear somebody trying to reinvent the idea. “And Just Once” is everything that came before; waste, alcohol, whatever.
The second song, “Moveable,” one of the highlights of the album, is where the journey really starts. “Don’t look back if your stomach is weak!” warns singer Chris Zerby, and he could be talking about Helicopter Helicopter’s own past output. (Their first album, which is also really good, by the way, has Chris and Julie Chadwick singing about blue babies with gangrene and smoking crack at the end of the world) But now it’s time to begin again; here’s where some of the album’s motifs kick in: Spaceships and ghosts, the things that enchant us as children, have recaptured our hero, whoever it is. He’s a born-again kid, if that means anything.
The third track, sung by Julie, is more confusing. I don’t think I’ve quite figured it out yet, honestly. Wherever she is, she’s trapped, and she had to kill to get there. But, like I said, I don’t know. I’m sort of dim sometimes, I guess.
On the album’s title song, we get back on track. I think it’s the same sort of Greek chorus character from the first song, again singing to our hero, who’s taken to “hiding out in backyards” and stopped going to nightclubs. But whoever is singing understands our hero, I think. He knows the power the stars hold for the imagination, and sings about “blasting off the planet/ a million ships an hour”. It’s one of the album’s edgier songs, which can perhaps be explained by the resentment of the singer towards our hero, who’s managed to stop drinking and start afresh.
After “Unfortunate”, another diversion (and what’s childhood without diversions?) comes “Passing Car,” maybe the most fun song on the record. It’s where the album turns, and you begin to realize that childhood isn’t, and never was, as idyllic as you remember it. There’s something about a wicked witch and Tonka trucks, but the song ends with the potent “I’ve been up all night panicking, thinking of the moonlit pines falling from above.” A wide-open horizon can be a scary thing, especially with a fragile grip on reality.
Maybe our hero’s just crazy. Or maybe (I hope) he has reason to be scared. In “Slow Dying Flashlight”, people are like snakes slithering in the beam of a flashlight. But there’s hope in the history of odd lives, hope of escaping from overindulgence. The idea of reality looming expresses itself more clearly in this song, as strange witches are conjured “to climb in our beds”. The hero (or the band, maybe) wait for a change of guard, although waiting is all that can be done, apparently. This is another slow, somewhat abrasive number in the face of the more melodic pop of “Unfortunate” and “Passing Car”, but it’s still totally convincing.
The space theme is most fully explored on “The History of Space Flight”, the only song written by Julie. Our hero tries to forget himself (or herself, maybe), but he forgets those around him and finds himself unable to connect his, uh, spaciness with the song’s “you”. “If I tried to build you a spaceman, would you let him float away?” Well, yes, you probably would, since you don’t really seem to get it at all.
The next-to-last song, “Bottom of the Ocean,” reminds me of Belly’s cover of “Think About Your Troubles”. Maybe it would remind me of the original, but I don’t know because I never heard the original. In the Belly song, the singer sings about pouring a cup of tea and thinking about the bubbles and the ocean and the fish that swallowed the water and the other fish that swallowed the first fish, and the whale that swallowed the other fish, until the water goes full-circle and comes out of the faucet again. I don’t really know if “Bottom of the Ocean” has anything to do with that idea, or if it’s just because it’s about, you know, the ocean, and because the logic of the Belly song (or Harry Nilsson, or whoever wrote it) suggests the mentality of youth. In the Helicopter Helicopter song, to get back to my point, the ocean and the moon are there to provide food for the imagination. Like in “Slow Dying Flashlight”, there isn’t anything to be done but wait. Meanwhile, the song asks, why not think about skeletons and haunted statues? This is my favourite song on the CD, by the way, because they sound gleeful singing it, and because it gives hope to the helpless.
Then comes “The Afterworld,” a strange ending for the whole adventure. The sky is falling. Maybe all the skeletons and haunted statues and strange witches have finally driven our hero in the edge. Now he’s hiding in the basement, not the backyard. But he’s still young, sucking freeze pops and listing a walking stick and a telescope as prized possessions. It’s almost like adolescence, sort of. The chorus, “I believe in sleeping late every day/ sometimes you just have to get away” suggests that the ride will never be a totally smooth one, and that despite whatever efforts our hero makes to rediscover the world around him he’s still just a regular cigarette-smoking Generation Y nobody. But he’s discovered the secret to keep going, which children know but which people sort of lose along the way. The world is fascinating, and space even more so. While you’re waiting for your life to change, take a look around and dream.
Of course, being a rock album, it’s all a lot less heavy-handed than I’m probably making it sound (and it’s all under half an hour, too!) For the kids like me who basically liked alternative music but run away screaming every time somebody like Fred Durst comes on the radio, this is definitely some kind of God-sent gift.
A
(note: in writing this I managed to spell Helicopter wrong four times. I just thought I’d say that.)
