Pop music stopped being serious a long time ago. And the people who sell it to us try to convince us that this is a virtue. We’re supposed to use it and explore a world of wonder. Listen to it, they say, and you can make believe you’re Sabrina Carpenter shaking her butt on television or Jay-Z pretending to shoot people down with his cigar.
But pop music has stopped being ridiculous, too. That’s even harder to take. It feels like millennia ago, but the likes of The Beatles or Bob Dylan often wagered with their own careers, putting out things that made no sense in the most beautiful way possible. Captain Beefheart then broke up the blues and reassembled it in ways that should’ve never made sense but kind of did.
I miss talented musicians who seem to try and forget everything that they know about music when writing it. I like to be surprised and feel like I’ve ended in a place I’ve never seen before. If that’s what you like as well, there’s a high likelihood you’ll be intrigued and even enjoy Bilardo’s “Tarpaulin.”
It sounds like the transcendental meditation-prophesizing folkie Donovan writing clues about some grand conspiracy. As you listen to “Tarpaulin Man (Floating on the Motorway)”, you get the feeling that, maybe, you ought to call somebody and tell them what’s happened. But you stop, and you tell yourself that you don’t really know what is going on either.
The song is a beautifully bizarre stream of conscious folk-rock number that seems to follow some event that we’re never going to talk about again. If this were a painting, it’d be of the abstract school that rich New York City lawyers put in their offices.
The other song on this single is “Sneaky Fucker.” Sparse lead lines are played over an almost country and western chord progression like ever-heavier drops of rain falling on a car windshield.
If the illusion of pop music ain’t quite doing it for you anymore, and if you need something that feels like it ought to require a prescription to consume, Bilardo’s “Tarpaulin” might just be your thing.
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