Frog Eyes: The Folded Palm (2004, 34:16)
In Alan Moore’s graphic novel From Hell, Dr. William Whitey Gull (aka Jack the Ripper) begins to experience visions of the future when he performs violent ritualistic murder, until achieving the former finally becomes his reason for doing the latter. Whether this represents something supernatural or is an ‘aura phase’ hallucination (apparently common among serial killers) is left to the reader.
In the first instance, Gull is walking down a dark alley with his soon to be second victim when he is startled by a man opening his curtains on a window facing the alley. Behind this bathrobe-clad man, Gull sees a man’s head talking on a television set. A poster of Marilyn Monroe adorns the apartment wall. It’s 1888. Typically a model of abominable self-assurance, Gull is frightened as a deer in headlights. The same phenomena reoccurs with his third victim: He turns around, blood dripping from his hands and knife, to find a skyscraper dwarfing him, thrust a century forward into the very same Mitre square.
James Mercer of Frog Eyes comes off as a sort of fellow time-traveling victim of transhistorical delirium. Most of his memories are breathless first-person accounts from nineteenth century Europe that the spirit he’s seized with must urgently divulge as revelations, anecdotes and rooster-throated morning warnings to the denizens of today.
You can’t follow his convoluted lyrical bramble, let alone buy into anything he’s saying more than you could a LaRouche pamphlet. Yet The Folded Palm overflows with such sheer insistence, conviction, melodic spark, perfect execution and apropos production, that the songs may nonetheless win you over.
At one point Mercer confesses, “I’ve fucked a lot of ponies.” I don’t think he really did, but I think he thinks he did. Later, he chants, “I don’t do drugs.” I believe him, but I doubt he even believes himself. The only thing we might really be on the same page about is when he quips, “I am a send-up of a hallowed tradition too / So honor thy friends, they are just bends, in the slapstick tradition their loyalty bends / Oh, under the shadow of a hallowed empire’s tomb!” Regardless of whether or not that makes any sense, Mercer is a hard man to argue with.
At its worst, The Folded Palm is a cautionary tale about conspiracy theories rotting your brain. At it’s best, it glows bright enough to light the room green with absintheine charm.
kjell 