SOUNDTRACK: KING’S X-Ear Candy (1996).
I think of Ear Candy as King’s X most upbeat record musically. Even the cover is upbeat! It’s their first cover in ages which isn’t dark and forbidding. It actually has a white border! And of course, it’s hard to miss the psychedelic, brightly colored scarab beetle.
And the music matches the cover really well. The opener, “The Train” is a catchy bit of near psychedelic rock which brings Ty’s vocal to the front. It seems to set the tone for the rest of the album. Even “Picture” contains a simple guitar riff reminiscent of the joy of Out of the Silent Planet.
I’m jumping down to “Mississippi Moon,” one of their supremely pretty songs ala “Goldilox.” It’s more of a bluesy ballad, but the chorus is just amazing.
“A Box” continues the loveliness from the beginning of the album. Its message, that there’s no room inside a box, seems to apply to the band’s more claustrophobic sounds as of late. But lest you think they’ve gone soft, “Looking for Love” is a fabulous rocker, which makes me think of Thin Lizzy.
Ear Candy also features “American Cheese (Jerry’s Pianto)” a rare track with Jerry Gatskill on lead vocals. It contains the most Beatlesque sounds of a band that is full of Beatlesque sounds. This one maintains a great deal more psychedelia than previous songs. It’s not prog rock by any means, it’s just straight up psychedelia.
Lyrically, Doug opens up about his loss of faith; “Run” addresses it directly: “Yeah she told me, that if I wasn’t good He would get me, make me pay for everything I did, and she said that everybody bad would burn in Hell. I did what she told me and I became someone else.”
Despite the negative feelings in the above song, musically the album is very positive: a lot of the distorted riffs are toned down, and the album feels less angry. I think this disappoints some of the band’s fans, but it retains such authentic King’s X sounds that it’s hard to argue with it.
[READ: September 5, 2008] “Springtide,” “Other People’s Money,” “The Position” “Factory” & “Abstract”.
In 2007, Forbes magazine asked five authors to write about this scenario: “It’s the year 2027, and the world is undergoing a global financial crisis. The scene is an American workplace.” I discovered these stories when I was looking up some information about Max Barry (I had just read Company). I was surprised to see that the stories were in Forbes, but whatever. When I saw that there were five authors given the assignment I decided to try all five. (more…)
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