into the mouth of madness

How did I get here? I never meant for this to happen. I had a wife once. Two kids. The guys at work liked me. We had beers at the pool hall every couple weeks or so. I found a cat behind the new house. I took it in. It would only eat the seafood-flavored cat food. It loved that stuff. We were happy. Now… now it’s all a dis­tant memory. I’m here, and… and everyone is just talking about music? And they expect me to talk about music too? No. You don’t know what you ask of me. The phrases here, so thoughtful. The musical taste, so… tasteful. No. You don’t want this. Not from me. But… but they say I have no choice. Listen, guys, can’t we dis­cuss this like rea­son­able adults? I… I guess not. All right. All right, I’ll do it. But you’re not going to like it.

Listen, it’s great to like bands who are “artis­ti­cally inno­v­a­tive,” or whose songs con­tain “intro­spec­tive” lyrics, or who can “play their instru­ments well.” But look, I’m a busy man. I haven’t got time for all that shit. I need my songs to con­sist of mul­tiple layers of noise delving in and out of each other, not to con­tribute to a greater whole, mind you, but in direct com­pe­ti­tion with each other. The gui­tars should be so full of dis­tor­tion that I can’t tell whether my speakers are shit or they actu­ally wanted it to sound like that. The bass has to want to be heard over the guitar, and not simply plod away in the back­ground. The drums should be more full of kicks and crashes than a star­tled donkey in the bev­er­age­ware aisle. There should be at least two vocal­ists trying to shout over each other, and under no cir­cum­stances should I be able to dis­cern what the hell they’re saying. In sum­ma­tion, a good song reaches such heights of con­fu­sion that I can’t even work out how many people are actu­ally in the band or whether they are in fact all trying to play the same song at the same time. And prefer­ably, it’s all deliv­ered in two min­utes or less. It might not sound good; in fact, it’s almost cer­tainly ter­rible. But it feels good.

Not long ago, I dis­cov­ered a band which per­fectly under­stood this phi­los­ophy. A band that went around playing shows for the sheer fun of it and released record­ings as an after­thought. Five people whose energy and enjoy­ment of their music is obvious even when you can’t figure out any­thing else that’s going on in the song. Trag­i­cally, late last year, the band decided to throw away a promising future in favor of higher edu­ca­tion and pur­suing ful­filling rela­tion­ships. Their loss is ours, but we can take com­fort in the fact that their few record­ings persist.

All right, enough bull­shit. It’s Mika Miko!

Mika Miko — “Take It Serious”

Imagine a hus­band, nearing retire­ment age, wearing a cardigan and slip­pers with the soles worn through, set­tling into what he still calls an “easy­chair” with a sturdy cup of ice­water and the half of the paper that he didn’t get to this morning. He finds a new record on the tray next to him by a band he has never heard of. It’s called “C.Y.S.L.A.B.F.” What could that pos­sibly stand for? Well, he decides, a little music in the evening might be just the thing. He starts the record, then picks up the sleeve again and scans the track list as the music begins. The first track opens with an aggres­sive riff, the drums kick off, and his mouth opens in a silent O of mixed amaze­ment and con­ster­na­tion as he real­izes that the ter­rible grammar in the title of this song is not some mis­take, not some typo; no, this band knows, and they don’t even care. What is she saying? he asks him­self in bewil­der­ment that is now becoming total. Wait, and what is this other girl saying? Why does she do that thing with her voice? And now they’re just shouting at each other! Why are they having so much more fun than I am! Because, my friend, this is Mika Miko. And your life is a lie.

Mika Miko — “Sev”

You know those people at punk shows who get right in amongst the band and wait for the really loud, frantic songs and then just bounce off each other like dis­ori­ented mice in a drug testing lab? This song was written for them. I’m not going to apol­o­gize for this song. It’s utterly ter­rible. There is vir­tu­ally nothing that might redeem it. Maybe the pres­ence of a sax in a punk song is a little inter­esting, but it’s been done before. The vocalist is strug­gling to be heard over the instru­ments. At one point she rhyth­mi­cally calls out “Okay!” as if it’s the only thing holding the band together, and per­haps it is. It almost feels as though the band is having fun while nobody else is, that their per­for­mance has become an unlis­ten­able mess. But that’s not so. Somehow it rises above all that. This is a beau­tiful song and it holds a place as one of my favorites of all time.

Mika Miko — “I Got A Lot (New New New)”

This band doesn’t have much of a range, I must admit. It doesn’t really need to. But regard­less, here and there a song stands out as being a little dif­ferent. This is a track from their most recent and per­haps final recording (although one last EP is rumored) called “We Be Xuxa.” It’s rel­a­tively clean. It’s catchy. The singer actu­ally sings… sort of (although she does still do that thing with her voice). It’s a nice little tune that you wouldn’t be embar­rassed to bring home to meet your par­ents. I believe that this song and this final album show that, in other cir­cum­stances, the band may have ended up doing some­thing more “inter­esting,” if you’re into that kinda thing. It’s obvious the band were aware they were recording their final album (another track, “Turkey Sand­wich,” con­tains a 10 second aside which is a sort of open letter farewell from one vocalist to the other) and per­haps they felt some freedom to experiment.

So, my new friends, that’s Mika Miko. The record­ings the band made over their seven year career add up to about one whole hour of lis­tening time. You can buy them from PPM Records. So go on, give them a listen. A band doesn’t have to be clever to be good.