"Guy Got Kilt"... How Columboid and I Became One.

I've always been one to strongly insist that any album, of any content, is significant if it lends itself to a new personal experience for an individual - or fosters one they may have already had at some time in their lives.  You think about albums that are considered "the best of all time" or simply "the best" by a given artist, and a few things come to mind: (1) If they are heralded as "best of all time", then they were likely best selling records because (a) they appealed to a lot of people on the same level (which is no small task), and/or (b) they were just really well marketed (i.e., any fucking album by the goddamn Beatles). (2) they made an impression on the jadedly unimpressionable (critics) who represent a select fraction of the population that wield the ability to propel them into stardom, or they made a tremendous widespread impact on a larger amount of people who were equally, though maybe less articulately, amazed at what they'd done (think Wilco's Yankee Hotel Foxtrot... in both scenarios, come to think of it).  In either case, music is never anything to anyone until it does something for someone. Arguably then, everything ever released meets that criteria for someone; but the true decider of the sides is just how many people were touched.  It's like the analogy that one person praising any single given entity is an unbalanced weirdo... but a bunch of people doing it gives that thing validity and makes the thing Holy - and therefore and therein, all accolades applied to said entity become Gospel.

This brings me round in as wide an arc as possible to the Brooklyn based trio Columboid. Signed to the Chicago based La Société Expéditionnaire label (the 4AD of the new age, in my humble opinion): They wouldn't mean a thing to me if they didn't touch me unexpectedly - and if they and I hadn't been in the right place at the right time at the same time, we'd have never become one.

So here's the story: I became familiar with Columboid while doing research for an article about two years ago on another La Société extraordinaire, one Mr. Daniel Knox (who I've become quite taken by as well). I noticed the band on the label's roster, and one particular song title caught my eye: "Guy Got Kilt".  And I laughed aloud. Why? Well, let's delve into that:

A co-worker friend and I would occasionally frequent the casino after work on some nights, in search of a quick fix solution to our financial woes and general white collar depressions.  On one night, while riding the elevator up to the top floor, when the doors opened, we were met with a group of African American youth talking loudly about a guy named Robbie. One of these fine young representations of American youth said to the other: "Yo man, Robbie got kilt! Did you know dat?  Robbie got kilt!!"  For whatever reason, my friend and I found this as amusing as they did, and we laughed almost as riotously as they were as we passed by them.  To this day, "Robbie Got Kilt" has become a phrase we utter now and then for a laugh, ironically and effectively adopting it as an inside joke derived from an inside joke that we weren't in on in the first place. So now fast forward to me discovering Columboid's "Guy Got Kilt" and finding it hilarious.  The seeds of curiosity were planted by the song's title alone, and Columboid became an immediate point of interest.

Make no mistake, though "Guy Got Kilt" may have been the beacon of my initial concern with Columboid, after listening to the We Were One album in its entirety, that particular track now merely serves as a harbinger, a mood setter or stylistic status quo establisher, if you will, to represent the tone for the rest of the record.

Coming in like a weird crossbreed of Pee Shy's "Four Miles" and The Who's "Baba O'Riley", "Guy Got Kilt"'s generic percussion intro and deliberate (and amusingly grating) keyboard harmonics, extraordinarily expand the song into its full blown swollen and gritty electric bass thubbings.  This, synced alongside precisely arranged drumming - and with no shortage of high hat flourishes,  manages to shift your attention away from the song's oddness relatively quickly when it gets going full throttle, and you realize you can actually fucking rock to it.  Exactly how the lyrics relate to a guy getting killed is a bit of a mystery, but as vocalist Ryan Hamilton sings: "the news hit me like a shot to the head, and I couldn't breathe properly as if I were dead.... the realization was one that I couldn't shake off, and all the time you were right - yeah baby, you're right..." the notion is put in place that this story's being told more as a hindsight realization of a warning not heeded, rather than recollecting the how and why the guy in question "got kilt".  Is this some sort of reflective projection, Columboid? Well done... well done indeed. 

For a band having recorded an album with ne'er an electric guitar to be heard, and a generous helping of what sounds like a garage sale Casio keyboard being the primary instrumentation of choice, you can't help but be stricken by just how well they're able to make this all work in their favor.  And that isn't just giving them credit for trying - not in the least. Thirty seconds into every subsequent track you're reminded that this shit is kicking pretty hard and solid, considering its minimalist makeup.  

Take "Working Stiff" as prime example. Very easily one of the most bad ass songs on the album. It plays itself in a chaotic stratosphere where keyboards bear down on the listener like jagged metal alarm clock teeth, resonating like an emergency siren in your ears, jolting you into a sort of half mechanized consciousness.  It's the sound of machinery and din from every angle and corner, a staggering barrage of industrial rock and roll what-the-fuckery.  Neil Benjamin provides some rapid, if not psychotic, than stark raving mad percussion on this track, propelling the ascendancy of the song alongside solemn and bold lyrical proclamations: "I'm gonna do what the engine says the right thing is, to follow you closely along this precipice... I'm trying not to become what the engine costs..." and the track's abrupt, sudden cut ending just leaves the hair standing at chilled attention on every inch of your body. 

It takes little more than three or four songs into We Were One to realize Columboid is the kind of rare breed of band that truly owns themselves. Say what you will about postmodern eclecticism, Columboid gives the art a new coat of luster that's both exciting and comfortable at the same time; free of pretension and completely peerless. Granted, a song like "IJNAR" would suggest something played by a semi-sedated Les Claypool in its bass driven quirkiness, but with a more ascetic charge overall - and certainly not as lyrically adolescent.

Despite the unique impression Columboid makes, I'd be shocked if We Were One becomes a one off summary of the band's total net worth.  It's a one of a kind album, yes, but it still leaves a lot of atmosphere for the group to explore and play in on future outings, and the hintings of where they're looking to go are ever present on this album.  While its sadly true that such "sui generis" artists often tend to have the weak genetics that can quickly sabotage them by way of heavy-handed insistence on what they represent overpowering their desire to expand their talent and progress in new directions (i.e., The Residents post 1984, as example of one such a demise), Columboid comes off too hopeful and too aware to let that be their story...

...but then again, who can say what's to come. After all, I never would have anticipated that guy Robbie getting kilt in the first place.

You can pick up a vinyl copy of Columboid's We Were One here.