The stuff of life, of everyday/everyman interaction, is harnessed by intrinsic glue. That's what Belgium composer/performer Jacques Emoi implies on his album's cover: "I'm gonna stick my soul to you and there's nothing you can do because I'm the owner of the glue." The declaration makes sense. If you've suffered any sort of hardship, the declaration should resonate. More than that, it should be shared.
Emoi's approach to Glue: A Brief History is hobo-ish and blues-based. To rephrase, Glue rises from the soul's gut-grime. It speaks of a chafed man who's trekked the hard-stone paths to get to where he is, and if allegorical glue keeps him whole, it's only because he's applied it ad nauseum among his tattered parts, with a voice that's sorrowful, timeworn and undefeated in its mordant demise.
The album consists of the following callous yet compassionate, interrelated compositions:
1) La Mouche
2) Prions, mes pierres
3) Le Soleil est mobile
4) La Lune en bots
5) Quatre
6) Des branches
7) Een hapje
8) A Coughing Blues
9) 38 mm Suite
10) Entremets
11) Triangulaire
12) Eventail
13) Engourdissement
14) Strings on Tongue
15) Looser (pour Beck)
16) La lune es bois (La Lune est ronde. Emoi aussi Remix)
17) La Mouche (Pipi Remix)
The titles say it all, even without translation and even when open for interpretation. The same can be said of Emoi's lyrics and of course, his belabored expression.
For example, "La Mouche" and its "Pipi Remix" are fully equipped with ideal lament (and with maybe just a spoonful of yearning stirred in), which commence and conclude the album: perfect for a fly that zips from place to place, dung pile to dung pile, eating crap after crap to stay alive. Groans and plucking chords do the Bojangles-thing for the tipsy selection(s), teasing the ears to the point that the body skids all over the squalid map.
"Des branches" accentuates the concept, spreading an intersection among the narrator's traveling scuffs: no vocals in this instance, just a sincere soundtrack for a vagabond who's danced that long, umbrella-less stretch. But "A Coughing Blues" spits with equating, beaten fury: a consistent, confused drumming for any available plank, planting music where there should be none, and in a way, that means everywhere.
As untamed as the latter tracks are, others are more confined and by their downtrodden nature, tear-jerking. For example, "38 mm Suite" gathers life's piercing pieces and edits them into a languid queue of cigarette-burned clips: a tramp's sleepy kicks and stomps that go from mumbling scene to mumbling scene, placid but chaotic for all their impoverished consequence.
"Strings on a Tongue" plays that way, too: a Tin Pan Alley tryst gone astray, but gosh, what joy lies in its coarse construction. For the most part, its shaky melody acts as a prelude to "Looser (pour Beck)", which isn't so much a homage to the famous tune and artist, but rather a sequel to all the despair digested and regurgitated over many vanquished years (to some degree or another, a recurring motif behind every sticky track).
"Le Soleil est mobile", in a more specific manner, represents being drained through gluttonous desire. It nearly breaks off the spool as it soars and shrieks: Jekyll phasing into Hyde, with Hyde shriveling under the sizzling, spotlighting sun, deathless but never truly alive, no matter where one heads.
As the above examples proclaim, Glue: A Brief History is a condensed anthem of fickle tragedy, but also one that sustains its machoism to make the listener stronger within its Nietzsche-esque twist, its tracks unceasing shoves of vain attempts and through such, continuous, trophy-less triumphs. I guess that's what Glue is all about: keeping it together, even as the body and soul fall apart.
Discover Emoi's arduous endurance, as well as his accompanying book: Oh yeah, there's plenty of potent, penniless poetry in the latter and each piece piqued to the self-effacing extreme!
https://submarinebroadcastingco.bandcamp.com/album/glue-a-brief-history
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