New Release: Army of Me
Iceland's greatest hit
The worst class I took at the University of Utah was called Operations Management. Besides the fact that the subject matter was irrelevant to my future and terminally dull, I didn’t even need the credits. Why was I even there? Well, I was talked into taking it— “it’ll be fun” + “we can hang out”1—by a friend who shall remain nameless because that friend then dropped the class without telling me before it was too late2. Good times. I dreaded the class so much and did just enough to get by and no more.
EXCEPT!
Every day, before his lecture, the professor would take advantage of the auditorium’s giant video screen. He’d crank the volume and we’d all watch some music video (maybe a live performance, maybe an actual pre-reality-show MTV-type video) on a giant screen. I remember him showing the video for “Rabbit In Your Headlights” by UNKLE, which features a seemingly disturbed man3 walking in the middle of the road towards the camera and getting absolutely and repeatedly throttled by traffic in some tunnel. None of the cars are stopping, most of the drivers only sort of glancing at the man.
The climax of the video/song shows the man throw off his coat, symbolically making himself even more naked and vulnerable. At this point, he holds still, throwing his arms out wide in a pseudo-Jesus pose. As an audience, you wanna cover your eyes, having already been conditioned to seeing this guy get violently thrown around by cars. But it’s different this time. The man stands strong and the car gets busted up. Pretty epic.
The coloring and concept of the video feel very 90s. The desaturation and Matrix-ness of the color correction. The combination of dingy-ness and epic-ness. The production of the song (drum sounds especially) also stick it firmly in the 90s.
But that’s not why we’re here today. All of the above is just because I can’t resist4 a Radiohead-adjacent tangent.
There were times when I would go to Operations Management, sit in the very very back of the auditorium, watch whatever video the professor had chosen that day, and bail. It felt mildly disloyal to love the professor’s music side but despise the narcolepsy-inducing academic side. The heart does what it wants, I suppose.
The video I remember most—more than tunnel-man-car drama and any of the live performances—was Bjork’s “Army of Me.”
It was a collision in its own right: an utterly unique, on-fire artist (Bjork) with an on-fire song (“Army of Me”, sounding like some sci-fi, apocalyptic, churning end of times dance club) intersecting with a video director (the great and singular Michel Gondry) on the rise—everyone with something to prove. The video is weird and wild and full of friction and energy and question marks. And vision5.
There’s also a gorilla/dentist? Lots of tooth stuff, too. Oh, and that grey/green 90s color palette again. (No shade. Just observing.)
So, years later I decided to cover it, but from the point of view of the gorilla/dentist (just kidding; yes, we covered it…no, we did not try to get inside the headspace of Gorilla, DDS). At one point in the mid-00s, I had a home-recorded acoustic version up on MySpace6.
This version was recorded with a full band one Saturday at June Audio in Provo, Utah sometime between my second album (Paul Jacobsen & The Madison Arm) and third album (Two-Headed Hearts). It was a weird day in the studio, where it didn’t feel like much was clicking. It’s a case study for how much we can get in our own heads about stuff (my brain is not my friend!) and miss magic happening right in front of us. With some perspective (and intervening years), I revisited the recordings and was surprised that a few of the songs turned out really compelling7, this being one of them. I don’t believe we did more than one take of any of them.
I had a concept for this series of cover songs, where, for the cover art, I would hand-draw interpretations of famous album covers but featuring me instead of the original artist. It was ok (see below), but I never quite felt like it was IT.
I had another concept8 where my friend Jed would photograph me just like the famous album covers. Both concepts were solid ideas, in my opinion, but ultimately my dumb perfectionism and their high production value resulted in execution being a real barrier.
So I abandoned both concepts and instead used Tosh Brown’s fantastic Two-Headed Hearts album art as the foundation for the entire series of covers (you’ve already seen the art for God Only Knows). Colorways and typography, baby9!
The song comes out officially in a few weeks10. But I figured Substack deserved a sneak listen. Some of my highlights: Ryan Tilby’s groovy bassline and the way Scott’s guitar and Pat’s drums play off of each other right at the end—a tribute to what great players and listeners they are/were.
THE PLAYERS
Drums: Pat Campbell
Bass: Ryan Tilby
Mutant Glockenspiel: Brian Hardy
Hammond B3 Organ: Ryan Tanner
Electric Guitar: Scott Wiley
Acoustic Guitar, Vocals: Paul Jacobsen
Engineered, mixed, and produced by Scott Wiley at June Audio in Provo, Utah.
The first thing anyone thinks when they hear the words “operations management” is “fun.”
In my memory, the main guy in the video was guest singer Thom Yorke of Radiohead. But it’s actually an actor, whose distinctive face I can’t believe I forgot.
“We are helpless to resist”— Radiohead from “Decks Dark” on A Moon Shaped Pool
Ever watched a bad music video? It all comes down to lack of vision. It means the band/artist knew they had to do something but had no ideas (or maybe they had bad ideas, but I tend to think they came up empty-handed). So they hire some director, but not someone with interesting concepts, just someone known to “git r done.” That director decides that we’re just gonna do a live performance in the desert or on a cliffside or something. And it’s expensively unmemorable. Meanwhile, there are bands and directors out there with ideas like this:
And bands like OKGo who made their entire buzz and identity out of videos:
Sure, I’ve seen a good live performance video here or there. Some great ones even. But usually they’re just the by-product of a lack of vision, a deficit of imagination, a failure to know your band’s own brand. A stand-in for, y’know, an actual idea.
MYSPACE!
As part of my Covers singles series, I’ll finally be releasing our version of Kathleen Edwards’ “Six O’Clock News”, which was the last song recorded at the same sessions as this Björk cover. I also included a new version of our song “Lung”, from this session, on an EP for our Kickstarter pledgers.
Three good songs from one session doesn’t seem like a “day that wasn’t clicking to me.” But, again, we can (ok, I CAN) get swept up by emotion and negativity and give in to their fake momentum.
VISION!
It was originally only sent to those who pledged to my last Kickstarter. But I liked it enough that I didn’t want it to only live on a Dropbox link.