Barcelona
TransHuman Revolution
[pulCec/Darla; 2001]
Rating: 6.3
Darla Records' James Agren had to put down his vegan tofu wrap just to make sure
he'd read the email right. Barcelona were breaking up? What a bummer. Not only
were they one of the main bands on the pulCec imprint, they'd basically written
Darla's website. Nobody else had a sound quite like theirs-- some people had
taken to calling it "programmer pop," what with the keyboard melodies and all the
references to computers and software and stuff. Of course, they had taken to
writing some stock songs like "Teenage Pop Star" lately. The keyboard intro
soared like any classic new wave cut, and the boy-girl harmony was cute, but what
was with the chorus? "Gonna be a teenage one-hit washed-up messed-up megalomaniac"--
yet the song sounded like it could be a Saturday morning cartoon intro! Anyway,
they would be missed.
Jeff couldn't believe the news about Barcelona. He didn't like much synth-pop, but
the jangling guitars gave these guys a rocking sound. They didn't use a drum
machine, either-- it was all live. Who else was going to write songs like "I
Have the Password to Your Shell Account"?! When he saw that song title on Napster
back in the day, he thought it was a joke. And Jennifer Carr, whoa-- brains,
beauty and a good voice. She could take his server down any day. It
didn't make any sense, the new album was just as good as all the others. "West
Coast Radio" was like a Beach Boys song for the digital age, with Jason Korzen
singing about some intimidating California girl and Carr cooing backing vocals.
The album art was cool, too-- images of robots with serving trays Photoshopped
into pictures of African natives. It was something conceptual about primitives
and futurists. But he had to get back to work; the figures for the next round of
missile tests needed to be in by five.
Trevor Kampmann had seen it coming. All his engineering work couldn't do much
for a song like "The Power of Jen." The surf riff wasn't much different than the
Cult's "She Sells Sanctuary," and Jen Carr insisted on singing something twee
about boys who kept calling her. The chorus was total fluff: "J-E-N-N-I-F-E-R."
Ugh. They'd written some really great songs for the album, though. "Human
Simulation" bleeped along with its buzzy Casio keyboards, and Carr's soaring
"I'd give you anything that you want" was irresistible. They really should have
put her in front of the mic more often. Most of the songs featured Korzen on
main vocals, and his delivery was just too forced. Cameron Crowe was a fan, and
he'd helped them to decide the final sequencing, but they couldn't seem to put
together enough songs to last half an hour. They may have perfected their style,
but all the mid-tempo rhythms didn't make for much excitement, and the guitar
tone tended to slip into monotony.
Sarah sat back from her iMac. She'd just imagined a two-song suite. It began
with a minute-and-a-half-long instrumental, "April 1978," which featured a gently
rolling beat and a guitar pinging at the high registers sentimentally. That would
serve as an introduction to "I Get the Message," another slow ballad that didn't
descend into cliché. Some lyrics even popped up in her head: "Radio waves reflect
across the screen/ Terminal haze, your transmission's beamed/ I feel the impact
from the satellite that's calling me." Later on, maybe she'd have somebody going
"bah-dah, dah-dah" over and over again, like a verbal expression of those lonely
radio waves. But then it occurred to her that maybe she was spending way too much
time at rockstargame.com. It was fun to watch her little automatons write the
same songs over and over, and "Everything Makes Me Think About Sex" almost made
it to hit single. But it was clear that a indie rock band inspired by silly 80s
groups like Sparks probably didn't have a chance to climb to the top, and it
wasn't going to get her an 'A' in Logic. Time to get back to work.
[Barcelona played its last show in February, 2002.]
-Christopher Dare, March 5th, 2002