Review: Banana Peel Slips on Itself by David E. Williams

Earlier today I was reading a Graham Greene novel and came across this exchange between two fictional high level administrators of a British intelligence office as they lunch together at club near the office:

“I like the food at Travellers just as much,” Hargreaves said.

“Ah, but you are forgetting our steak-and-kidney pudding. I know you won't like my saying so, but I prefer it to your wife's pie. Pastry holds the gravy at a distance. Pudding absorbs the gravy. Pudding, you might say, cooperates.”

Upon reading this sentiment, I thought of the songwriter David E. Williams because it is the sort of thing he might say were you to have lunch with him at one of the many gastropubs in the Philadelphia neighborhood of Fishtown where he resides. Although, to be honest I don't know of any such establishments that serve kidney pie or pudding and I couldn't say whether Mr. Williams is a pudding man or a pie man. The point is that he is a contemplative man who practices the type of mindfulness that would lead one to make such an observation. This becomes clear to when you pay attention to the lyrics of his songs, quite a few of which happen to include food descriptions or metaphors involving food.

Perhaps the quote above would not have immediately led me to think of Fishtown's dark balladeer if he weren't on my mind today as I prepared to write this review. As I mentioned in my piece on Thomas Nola's Pacific Palisades, I discovered that particular album after having just pre-ordered the upcoming David E. Williams record, which is due for release on June 21st. Since I said I would likely review it, I've been given a preview copy of all the completed songs in digital format. The title is Banana Peel Slips on Itself and it will be issued on CD by Old Europa Cafe, an Italian label specializing in various types of experimental music. You can currently listen to three of the tracks at his Bandcamp site, where you can also pre-order the CD or the digital version.

Cover for Banana Peel Slips on Itself

Although David E. Williams has certainly dabbled in the experimental, I would not classify most of music in that way, but it is always undoubtedly...different. He is a troubadour of tragedy, but in a funny way. This is especially true of the small tragedies, life's little nuisances that plague our every day existence like foot fungus or sunburn. He takes a subject that most might find absurd to even think about at all and presents it with a sinister twist. Nearly all of his songs include a blend of sorrow and a kind of humor that, while morbid, is more commiserating than cruel.

His musical style is somehow both a little too conventional and incredibly strange to the degree where some listeners might be put off. In recent years, he has recorded his songs from his home and performs most of the parts on his keyboard with an occasional guest musician contributing to a track. These are not merely “keyboard songs” though, but complex creations with a variety of different effects and layers of sound. The most notable aspect of his music is typically his vocals, which can range from softly lilting to violently growling with an ever-present dramatic gravitas utilized to demonstrate the character of the narrator.

This new album, Banana Peel Slips on Itself, fits all the descriptions I've written above. I think it to be top-form David E. Williams, on par with some of my favorite work by him. Probably my favorite song is called “Margaret Sanger Lives in Heaven” about the founder of Planned Parenthood, in which she goes to hell but then through prayerful intervention by persons unidentified she is able to be redeemed by fighting her way into limbo where “the souls of every boy and girl whose ever been aborted” now reside and she takes them with her into heaven. It's an intense song and lyrics are amazing. I would quote them entirely here but it doesn't seem appropriate in an album review. I'll just give you the first stanza:

Margaret Sanger died while dreaming things we take for granted:

her bold abortuaries in every corner of the planet.

Murder factories for modest means and even smaller

for children of three inches with no need for need for growing taller.

For as unpleasant as this is, it is a song about cosmic redemption; about looking straight into the darkness of ourselves and the world we live in and believing that there must some path back to God, “however you define him” to paraphrase the people at Alcoholic Anonymous. Undoubtedly, people who believe in Heaven and Hell will question the theological soundness of the scenario presented but that is kind of missing the point.

From strictly a musical perspective I think the song “Chiropractor Arrives by Helicopter” offers the most listening pleasure. It's on the longer side of all the songs, a little over five minutes, and unfolds a slow meditative audio experience with synthesized rhythms and little synthetic bird-like chirps. The lyrics are simple and short. At first I didn't understand them until I searched the internet for “chiropractor helicopter crash” and found a news story about a chiropractor in Florida who died when a helicopter he was riding in crashed into a mobile home, so I assume this must be the basis of the song. It was “ripped from the headlines” as they say.

(UPDATE: I've learned that "Chiropractor Arrives by Helicopter" is not inspired by that news story I've cited. It's just an odd coincide.)

Actually, the ambitious listener may be inclined to consult the internet to understand lyrics from other songs on the album. One such example is “Marquis de Sade was a Sadist”, which name-drops twelve different seemingly unconnected historical figures. I don't think there is actually a connection between all of them, but even understanding the way they are described might require some research for the uninformed. For instance:

And Georges Bataille

boiled eggs with his eye

He enjoyed them most

on thanatoast.

I'm not sure I get this.

You might remember me mentioning foot fungus earlier. Well, that gets brought up in the first song on the album called “Song About Being a Foot”. This is a perfect example of the contemplative mindfulness I mentioned that brings about a different way of looking at things. Here's how the foot introduces itself:

I am a foot.

Meet me at the end of your leg.

Meet me where your soul meets the floor

stompin' on a hard-boiled egg.

And what about food references? Well the best example on Banana Peels is called “The Clambake at the End of the World.” This song is apparently about environmental catastrophe and is sung with the exactly the opposite of a gusto, a helpless malaise about how there is simply nothing to be done to avert the pending disaster.

All of the songs that I've mentioned so far are pretty catchy to me, but there are a few that just don't do it for me musically. Even among these, there are amusing things to be found. “Sun Cracks Through Black Cotton” clocks in at just one minute and fourteen seconds long. It's just really odd, but it has a food metaphor. There is a particularly discordant cover of the old song “One Meatball” with guest vocals by Jerome Deppe, a frequently collaborator with David E. Williams. Go listen to a more traditional version and then listen to this one. Personally, I like the older version better, but it's another food song so...

Not every song needs to be beautiful to be interesting, and “I Dreamed I Caught a Cold” is a good example. The lyrics consist of just three couplets. First they are sung through one time in order, but then the couplets begin to overlap each other. While listening I couldn't help but feel that this felt exactly like dreams I have had where I seem to be trapped in some kind of loop that I keep living over and over. This is more like song-designing than song-writing. It may not appeal to most people but it is not without merit. Another song's design I liked was “Pets Will Eat Their Owners” which is seemingly over when the music suddenly explodes in an exuberant melodic breakdown that lasts another minute.

I'm not going to go into all fourteen songs on the album, but I think I've mentioned all my favorites and my least favorites, which are just okay. The songs falling in between my arbitrary standards of mentionability are good and I like them. I do want to point out one more favorite called “Lou Gehrig” with lyrics that were excerpted and re-arranged from the great baseball player's farewell speech. There is something special about the song because it picks out these quirky little moments from the speech and then ends with some of the most life-affirming words ever heard from a dying man in American history. Both the piano playing and the vocals are incredibly uplifting.

That's all fine and good, but my quibble is, why not a song about someone from the Philadelphia Phillies? All we ever hear about is the damn Yankees! You know, I once saw a baseball game in Philadelphia where David E. Williams drove a golf cart for the team mascot, the Philly Phanatic, while said mascot shot hot dogs into the crowd from a specially designed gun for shooting hot dogs. Who does that sort of thing? After you listen to Banana Peel Slips on Itself, I expect you'll know what kind of person does that sort of thing. A guy like David E. Williams.

Related: See my 2013 interview with David E. Williams for a discussion on his personal motivations for his songwriting among other things.