Review of Aesop Rock - Fast Cars, Danger, Fire and Knives
New York-born Aesop Rock has now been pummeling the underground hip-hop scene with complex, metaphorical lyrics and addictive beats for nearly a decade. Two years after 2003’s Bazooka Tooth, Aesop Rock released his EP Fast Cars, Danger, Fire and Knives. Like Bazooka Tooth, Aesop’s sound goes in a new direction on Fast Cars. The beats project a more electronic sound, and the production is more polished. This is a major departure from the Float and Labor Days style, which are more representative of “original” Aesop; as a fan of both of those albums, however, I loved Fast Cars from the first time I listened to it. Fans of older Aes sometimes regard his work following Labor Days as a failed exercise in overproduction; I strongly disagree, and while I haven’t yet gotten attached to Bazooka Tooth, I see Fast Cars as a brilliant little album. Though, being an EP, it features only seven tracks (eight with the bonus track “Facemelter”), the listener is not left unsatisfied; the album spans a respectable thirty-odd minutes, and all (or most) tracks - which, by the way, are all new; nothing here is rehashed - mesh well together for a cohesive work. No track is less than “good,” and at least three are gems that alone make the album worth picking up.
In my recent review of Labor Days (found here), I wrote that the album has a readily apparent and cohesive theme; it “reflects on the struggles of a working class imprisoned by capitalism.” While this album lacks such a single unitary topic, it maintains a focused feel, deftly rendering social criticisms on topics such as military aggression, suburban drug usage, and inauthentic religion. The album begins with a phone recording of Aesop’s mom, introducing her son’s album and adding “please do not bootleg.” At the start and/or end of every track on the album, Aes repeats his announcement “Alright, I have a new record, it’s called Fast Cars, Danger, Fire and Knives, out on Definitive Jux Records.” These brief interludes add a familiar feel to the album, and even create some element of a “rhythm between songs,” keeping pace across the whole album.
Lyrically, the album makes a strong start with the title track. After an introductory paragraph, the lyrics begin with the following:
“I pull the elephant tranq out of my neck
Gaffle a tank, count up the chips
Wrestle the fangs off of my fist
Flood a little soldier blood over the ogre
Acres on some holiday in Cambodia
With motor home appraisers”
First of all, the first three lines are just fucking cool. If you begin your album by removing an elephant tranquilizer from your neck, you will have my attention for the rest of the album. In context with the rest of the song, however - which covers military life, criticisms faced by Aesop, and finally, school shootings - the lyrics point to the harsh conditions endured by soldiers and the inhumane goals of military operations: spilling blood on a trip that, to them, very well may be a “holiday in Cambodia.” Aesop’s description of his critics is pretty funny, and easy enough to decipher:
“Never mind the bollocks
Like every other week these hipster tabloids
Jumping on and off my sex pistol’s bullets
Like every other week he spins the bottle
Like every other week these fucking fanzines
Forget if they spit or swallow”
The beat to this song is one of the best I’ve heard. The horns and instrumentation add greater vitality to the music, which is very rhythmic - it’s hard not to subconsciously start nodding your head in time with the beat on this track. The other exceptional beat on this album that holds close to traditional Aesop Rock is “Zodiaccupuncture.” This track was produced by Aes himself, and he goes far in exploring the new electronic sound with which this album experiments. The beat flows very smoothly, and compliments Aesop’s voice perfectly. The lyrics are perhaps the most complex on the album, but regardless of whether every sentence is perfectly understood, the intellect and wit characteristic of all of Aesop’s work is still evident: “And it looks like war, quacks like war, so it’s Occam’s Razor and I Swayze out the door. ”
Track 4, “Holy Smokes,” is brimming with lyrical ingenuity and charged with powerful criticism of modern religion. The song is introduced by a voiceover of a woman teaching children about parables; “earthly stories with heavenly meanings” that Jesus taught to people in order to teach lessons. Aesop Rock points out the moral inconsistencies exposed in the priesthood; “Kiddy porn dungeon, guns, and three fingers for your daughters / Caught belly-up, antique Nazi paraphernalia / You cannot pay your bills with holy water and Hail Mary luck [Oh my!]“ He also tells of a couple who turned their backs on religion, raising children in a household where religion took a backseat to other indulgences:
“Christmas morning smelled fresher than angel pussy,
But immaculate conception came second to playful goodies,
Like laser tag was way more spiritual than blood and body wafer bags,
And manger staff as long as Santa ate the cookies.”
Aesop cites this decline in the moral integrity of modern Christianity as reason to reject it: “Till priests’ laps slapped with parental advisory warnings / I’ll be auditioning gods in my office on Monday morning.”
“Winners Take All” is the single song on Fast Cars produced by artist and producer Rob Sonic. It doesn’t quite sound like the rest of the album; it’s slower, and the heavy bass from some of the other tracks is absent. The lyrics are told ironically from a soldier’s point of view, and make a particularly damning case against military interventions (”And when the automatic jitters wiggle the ribs / I feel so alive, I don’t care which bitch’s litter is clipped [Bang!]“). Aesop shows doubt even in these soldiers’ understanding of their motives; “You will die for the glory of… Shit, I can’t put my finger on it / But it’s big, big and legitimate!” The chorus of this song is perhaps the most telling:
“I have landed safely
I have not received my papers
I have zero natural enemies
I don’t know my location
I have no training in reconnaissance, combat or colluding
I’m calling for my orders, over
(STRAP ON A HELMET AND START SHOOTING!)”
If “Winners Take All” slows Fast Cars’s pace down a bit, the next track, “Rickety Rackety,” makes up for it. The track is a fast, 3-person tag-team rap, with Aesop Rock, El-P (owner of the Def Jux record label), and the recently deceased Def Jux artist Camu Tao. The upbeat pace and mood at first make the track feel out of place. It quickly grows on the listener, though; the beat is enjoyable, and the track gives all three performers a chance to showcase their abilities. The lyrics, moreover, are in places quite dense, dealing with inner-city drug trading and usage. “I pack a lunchbox, walk to the stoning, / Jump into the chemicals sold in my zoning. / I’m irrational, paranoid, tragic. / And the button on my chest says ‘panic’.”
Is Fast Cars Aesop’s best work? I’m not sure - I think that title still belongs to Labor Days. Is it great work, then? Absolutely. It’s a seamless, multidimensional showcase of the “new” Aesop Rock sound, with the same artful production and intellectual, poetic lyrics to which Aesop’s fans have grown accustomed. Moreover, the Collector’s Edition of this EP comes with the 88-page booklet The Living Human Curiosity Sideshow, a compilation of all Aesop Rock lyrics from Float through Fast Cars; if you enjoy Aesop’s lyrics, this alone makes buying the album worthwhile, as there are always places where the lyrics can’t be perfectly distinguished by ear. For any fan of hip-hop or intellectual music in general, Aesop Rock is not an artist to overlook.