WARREN ZEVON - Life'll Kill Ya (2000)

I've mentioned that I'm already quite familiar with Life'll Kill Ya, but it's been long enough that I can hear it with fresh ears, and now in context of the whole career.

Track One:  "I Was In The House When The House Burned Down"

Until this relisten, I always thought it was kinda of a shame to me that this one is sorta Kill Ya's ambassador to the world, the lead single at the time and today probably the one that the casual Zevon listener knows.  Not because I didn't like it, but because there are others on the record that're less repetitious and speak to me more.  I can't deny the appeal, though.  A simple strummed guitar part and a simple insistent drum pattern set the stage for what  the listened can expect from this collection - direct to the point of being painful.  And hey, harmonica fits in great.  Lyrically we get Zevon's scope of debaunchery and poetry, naturally making "I had the shit 'til it all got smoked" and "I stood on the banks 'til the river rose up" part of the same thought.  This is a good start.

Track Two:  "Life'll Kill Ya"

A longtime near-favorite for me.  That is a memorable piano hook that grabs one right away, spilling over into Zevon's mastery of opening lines - "you've got an invalid haircut."  He nails the wry wisdom he's going for with the ironic verses leading up to the chorus being genius in its bluntness - "life'll kill you, and then you'll be dead."  And maybe old or young, maybe there's an afterlife, whatever, doesn't change the basic truth.  Almost becomes reassuring, like an equalizer.

On this set of listens, though, one bad thing that jumps out at me is how nasal the delivery gets when Zevon is being arch.  It's there on IWITHWTHBD too, but most pronounced here.  I mean, clearly the guy is capable of singing deep and normal, like on the title lyric, but when he's talk-singing he sounds like a sillier "Weird" Al.

And on the very most recent listen, the other thing that jumps out is that the piano pattern is way more intricate than immediately meets the eye.  I especially like when things turn moody and sinister on the bridge.

Track Three:  "Porcelain Monkey"

I guess I'm a rock guy, huge shock here.  I get that Kill Ya isn't a big guitar rock album.  Hell, in past posts I've argued that the stripped down singer-songwriter acoustic vibe is a better fit for Zevon.  Still feel that way, in fact.  Yet am I going to immediately gravitate to the designated rocker of the record?  I am.  Rockin' but chill, distinct groove.

Lyrically, I'm still digesting my recent discovery of what the song is about.  Obviously it's another death obsessed number.  "He gave it all up for a porcelain monkey" both sells the sense of wasted potential and rolls off the tongue.  I never put together the in retrospect fairly obvious clues that the song is inspired by Elvis Presley.  And specifically, it's almost a petty rant about Elvis's commercialization, and the fact that Zevon thinks that maybe Wynonie Harris shoulda gotten some of Elvis's legendary status.  Well, truly a song written like a man destined to die a cult favorite rather than a mega-star...

Track Four:  "For My Next Trick I'll Need A Volunteer"

I'm focusing on the lyrics and vocals a lot here, because the songs on Life'll Kill Ya are nicely designed to accentuate the voice part maybe like no other Zevon album before.  For instance, I like the harmonica parts of FMNTINAV, sure, but what I remember about the song will always be the vocal melody and lyrics.

It strikes me that there are three different ways to write what I'll call an "I'm a piece of shit" song, and Zevon is actually quite accomplished at all three.  There are the songs in which the jerk acknowledges being a jerk without any sense that s/he has any regrets about it.  Zevon tends to mostly put on the unrepentant jerk persona in the guise of creating characters like Mr. Bad Example.  Second, there are the "I can get better" songs, which we sometimes get from our man Zevon when he identifies his failings and, mostly sincerely, promises to address them as part of his plea for his listener to reconsider him.  The third type, probably the trickiest to pull off, is the song from the perspective of someone who agonizes over who s/he is but makes it sound like a terminal condition deserving of the listener's sympathy.  Think the millions of songs written by addicts wallowing in self pity.  This can be done with or without a comedic spin - some try to make their narrator the hero, some try to make them seem as pathetic as possible.  Songs of that type are devastating (in a good way) if done successfully, but an unsuccessful version makes the narrator seem like an even bigger jerk, only caring about themself.

"For My Next Trick" threads the needle gloriously, casting its narrator (metaphorically) as a failing stage magician whose soundtrack is a bouncy beat, all the while sounding like he's about to cry as he goes through the motions.  If the self pity were either "louder" or "quieter," I could see this becoming insufferable.  Instead, I 100% buy the state of someone who believes that his only real talent is making things/relationships that he touches turn to shit.  Step right up and see the shit conjurer, everyone!  The song evokes that exact mood, such that yeah, I do sympathize.

Track Five:  "I'll Slow You Down"

Speaking of songs about being a piece of shit... oddly, I spent years thinking of one song as the next level of self-dissing after the previous song.  Listening now, though, it's obviously passive-aggressive, with the "you" being the sole target of scorn.  Musically seems almost like a holdover from his days with R.E.M. with the quavey vocals and double tracking.  Decent album track, not a standout.

  

Track Six:  "Hostage-O"

Especially coming after another slow number, here's where we go into a bit of a lull.  I've never much liked "Hostage-O."  I can hear where it almost works.  I like at the least the idea of a simple, almost pretty guitar line, while its quiet narrator soulfully reels off the darkest, most violent  images of submission he can to convey his desperation for the subject's love.  Doesn't land for me.  The tune is barebones enough to come across less "restrained"* and more "lifeless."  The lyrics are sparse and mostly sound like S&M as imagined by a vanilla.  And what is a "hostage-o?"  That neither means anything nor evokes an image.

Track Seven:  "Dirty Little Religion"

Back on track with a more appealing sort of dirty song.  It doesn't need to do anything fancy, just a simple blues-country stomp of a melody and the basic conceit of comparing fucking this particular character to an alternative faith.  Amen and hallelujah!  I love the little whistle in the background behind the third verse.

Track Eight:  "Back In The High Life Again"

... and then we come crashing down with a song that punches the listener right in the fucking feels.  Okay, so obviously we have a cover of a song by Steve Winwood.**  You know the song, right?  It's pleasant enough, right?  You don't actually process it or really listen to it, just accept it as part of the background noise, right?  Okay, I know some swear by Winwood's version as inspirational, and presumably it was a hit for a reason, so my experiences aren't universal.  But my experiences with the original song are basically totally nonexistent.  It's not even the best mega-hit from that particular Winwood record that has some form of the word "high" in the title, FFS!

So, I'd never had any interest or reason in thinking about what "Back In The High Life Again" was about, until a master got his hands on it.  Recast as a forlorn ballad, one realizes that the hook is solid gold and needs to be emphasized, not buried in synths.  And sung with a cracked dry-throated voice in the style of the bluesmen of yore, one immediately locks into the lyrics about the power of hope... and immediately grasps that this return to grace is absolutely never going to happen, and that the narrator knows it too.  Obviously the subject is not still out there the way she used to be ready to take him back.  Obviously the doors are closed and will remain closed.  

Before every fucking movie trailer was doing terrible breathy slowed-down versions of popular songs, Zevon was pulling off the trick to completely reinvent a song without really changing it all that much.  This version is brilliant on its own, and the recontextualization of a song that everyone knows is doubly brilliant.  I've never heard a cover before that so completely supplants the original.***  There's no reason to listen of any other version of BITHLA anymore.

Track Nine:  "My Shit's Fucked Up"

I've mentioned Zevon's guise as the dispenser of homespun wisdom already.  But will anyone ever top this?

I went to the doctor

I said "I'm feelin' kinda rough"

"Let me break it to you, son

Your shit's fucked up"

I said "my shit's fucked up?!

Well, I don't see how"

He said "the shit that used to work

It won't work now"

Where the title track focused on the end result, now we actually get more depressing by focusing on the process of decay, seeing things inevitably fall apart on the way to dying.  However cleverly you frame it, it'll happen to you.  A blow that can't be softened.  Not even by that wonderful dominant chord in what I'll call the third bar of the main riff.

Track Ten:  "Fistful Of Rain"

Having saturated the listener with their impending demise, Kill Ya ends with a few songs about, as Zevon would go viral for advising years later, enjoying every sandwich.  Here's a more produced track with chanting backup vocals for the follow-up to "Similar To Rain" in our little two-part series about rain being hard to hold onto.  I like the overall sound, the lyric, and the hook, and I like the way it works whether or not one believes that this grabbing ahold will yield any results.  Like a mantra to keep living for its own sake.  I want to adore the song rather than quite liking it, and I think what holds me back a little is the way the final chorus just will not end.  It is a good hook, but it's not "repeat dozens of times" good.

Track Eleven:  "Ourselves To Know"

I fucking hate it when songs glorify the Crusades****, but I'll forgive "Ourselves To Know" for doing just enough to establish the metaphor and then running with it.  There are only a certain number of non-clichéd ways to suggest that life is about the journey rather than the destination, after all.  As so often on this record, the straightforward acoustic arrangement proves to be the perfect showcase for a batch of lyrics - in this case, Zevon the poet reminding us to actually go out and find a meaningful sandwich to enjoy.  The subject change from first-person plural to second person for the final verse is spot-on.  

  

Track Twelve:  "Don't Let Us Get Sick"

I've spoken to people who want to cry when they hear this song.  On the one hand, I get that .  It's sad to realize that whatever we wish, we and are loved ones will get sick and/or old (probably through the process of getting our shit fucked up) sooner rather than later, and any joy we get is finite.  On the other hand, the song isn't really about mourning that so much as appreciating that joy.  I mean: 

The moon has a face and it smiles on the lake
And causes the ripples in time
I'm lucky to be here with someone I like
Who maketh my spirit to shine

I don't think of "Don't Let Us Get Sick" as a sad song for that reason.  It's more kinda the ultimate "enjoy every sandwich" song.

I mentioned in my post on Mutineer that every closing song on a Zevon record on the last batch - so, the run of closers that starts with "Mutineer" the song - has last-song-on-last-album vibes and would totally work as a career capstone.  Unfortunately, I guess, none of the others are "Don't Let Us Get Sick," which is not just next-level, but whatever the level above that is.

Overall and other thoughts:

I mean, wow.  I hope it came through in the track-by-track that I love this record.  In case it was somehow unclear, this is one of my favorite things ever recorded.  I'm getting so much pleasure out of the chance to fumblingly try to write about it and hopefully share with others.  If somehow someone has read this far who has not listened to Life'll Kill Ya, I strongly recommend addressing that deficiency ASAP.

- It's of course impossible to listen to Life'll Kill Ya without knowing that at the time of its release, we were three years or so away from Zevon's death from mesothelioma.  He didn't know he was dying in the sense that he hadn't been diagnosed yet, but surely he knew something was wrong by this point.  It's all there in the songs. 

- Kill Ya was the first Zevon record since Sentimental Hygiene, thirteen years earlier, to chart in the Billboard 200 on any level.  I hope he appreciated that, at least, even if the record could have and "should" have been a much bigger commercial success.  I'm just glad the fans got it.

- For a long time a tradition associated with B-Fest, my beloved schlock movie festival that I attend and write about every year, was the Telstar mix CD.  One year "Life'll Kill Ya" (the song) was on it, presumably mostly for its references to The Kingdom Of The Spiders and The Empire Of The Ants.  

- "For My Next Trick I'll Need A Volunteer"'s stanza about an escape artist makes me think of Houdini, and I really really want to believe that it's a brilliant bit of wordplay about the different meanings of the word "late."  Not sure if that was the intention, but if so, I adore it.

Favorite track:  "Back In The High Life Again"

Runner up:  "My Shit's Fucked Up"

Second runner up that I couldn't go without praising one more time:  "Don't Let Us Get Sick"

Least favorite track:  "Hostage-O"

Rating:  5/5

On to My Ride's Here, whenever I get around to it!

Definitive list of records by Warren Zevon profiled so far, in order of what I have decided is unambiguously their quality

1)  Life'll Kill Ya

2)  Bad Luck Streak In Dancing School

3)  Excitable Boy

4)  Mutineer

5)  Warren Zevon

6)  Transverse City 

7)  The Envoy

8)  Sentimental Hygiene 

9)  Wanted Dead Or Alive

10)  Mr. Bad Example

*pun unintentional

**"Back In The High Life Again" is the song title.  Without the "again," it's the Winwood album title

***No, not even that one time someone got a massive hit from covering Dylan, or that other time someone got a massive hit from covering Dylan, or that other other time...

****Although maybe I have the metaphor wrong, since I'm not aware of any crusades that started in Constantinople.  

BTW, I thought about linking that phrase to one of my posts about HammerFall's Glory To The Brave, a record I reviewed as part of my non-award-winning "classics of power metal" series and includes a bullshit crusader song.  But that song is on the second half of the record, so my posts take a while to get there, such that someone who doesn't normally read my writing about metal would be really confused as to why it was linked.