"It was a beautiful dawn, / as the sun peered out from the horizon / and the birds in the sky sang songs of freedom / and the hunters laid in wait in the tall grass..."
There is something about the acerbic politico punk social commentary of "Happy Ending" by Dutch American / Haarlem based alt rockers The Irrational Library that feels both dirty and clean at the same time. Dirty because the vestiges of truth are messy and sometime horrible and clean in the sense that, these guy's "in your face sound" poetic diatribe, that pushes tattooed fingers hard in your chest, washes away all the safe sounds that the masses happily consume crafted by the likes of Taylor Swift, Boy Genius, Tame Impala or Arctic Monkeys (and hell I like Boy Genius). It's just that you don't always want to digest songs about someone's personal heartbreak or other such things draped in "me, me me". Sometimes you need to hear about the unfettered brutality of systems created by conglomerates and governments and medias. Sometimes you need a sonic rant about the thick Neanderthal periphery of life around us, our devolution described by acidic lyrics.
"It was a beautiful day / as the children gathered free of Kevlar upon unguarded school yards / and the socially maladjusted wanna be school shooters just stayed at home in their mothers’ basements / to polish their AK’s, watch pornography, eat bologna / and masturbate over all their ammunition..."
Like the halcyon days of artists like DEVO or The Dead Kennedys or more contemporary artists like Sleaford Mods, Viagra Boys, Snapped Ankles, Erotic Secrets of Pompeii- within the upside down, rose thorned bloody opaque glasses you get the feeling that The Irrational Library and those that came before in a similar vein and those that will come after are holding up a cracked mirror reflecting a jagged fucked up world where the opiates of the masses are actually opiates and the billionaires are really the scary ones, but then... the billionaires have always been really the scary ones haven't they.
"It was a beautiful evening / to gorge upon an all you can eat buffet of disemboweled discourse / and to wash it down with the confused cocktail / of conservatives playing good cop to / bewildered liberals who seem to have lost the fucking plot..."
LINER NOTES:
[The Irrational Library is a Haarlem based rock band with its roots firmly planted in both the regional and international counterculture. The Dutch-American band produces a raw, dirty groove which is heavily influenced by icons of beat-, provo- and punk culture. The band’s rhythm section -Mishal Zeera on bass and Lars van der Weijden on drums- puts the poetry packed with social criticism on a musical freight train with the velocity of acts such as The Minutemen or Gil Scott Heron. Tom de Haan’s baritone sax then propels this freight train ever onward with tight melodies and psychedelic improvisations.]
THE VOICE OF THE IRRATIONAL LIBRARY:
[Joshua Baumgarten/The Irrational Library – (1971) Expat suburban NY jew living the life in the Netherlands. Was taught early on by overly nationalistic school teachers to either “love it or leave it” so he left it. Now up to his neck in the muck of cultural agitation in Haarlemtown, Baumgarten is considered to be the second coming of some unknown beat poet from the ’60s. Baumgarten denies this and does not believe in reincarnation. Baumgarten has been said to use the word Fuck quite often in his writings. Baumgarten is the author of a number of self-published books and actually published books but continues to have little patience for poetry editors. As the frontman for the band The Irrational Library band, Baumgarten says a lot of things that a large number of Dutch people don’t understand. Baumgarten’s latest book of poems entitled Give Me This Moment was published by Uitgerverij Kennermerland. Baumgarten hopes that one day, poetry will be the golden shower to rain down upon all the nationalistic idiots around the world. Baumgarten believes that instigation is the seed for inspiration as well.]
It is pretty weird when you realize how lost us normies can really be and how we tend to find ourselves so late in life that it is damn near impossible to get off the path we have followed.
"It had been a beautiful day / one in which I stared directly into the sun / and blinded my own sense of being. / Sarcastic and hazy, trust me I am not lazy / but sometimes I do lean upon the old cliche / that this world has gone fucking crazy. / And by staring directly into the sun / I can blind myself into seeing / the silver linings dancing around all the clouds / raining down upon our communal misery..."
-Robb Donker Curtius
https://www.instagram.com/theirrationallibraryband/
https://theirrationallibrary.bandcamp.com/track/happy-ending-2
https://www.facebook.com/TheIrrationalLibrary
The Irrational Library, Dutch / American alt rock band, The Netherlands, politico punk, art punk, trash punk, indie rock, garage rock, art rock, underdog rock, new album "Good Busy", single "Happy Ending",
THE FACTS AS WE KNOW THEM
https://www.instagram.com/theirrationallibraryband/
https://theirrationallibrary.bandcamp.com/track/happy-ending-2
https://www.facebook.com/TheIrrationalLibrary
https://irrationallibrary.com/
“A halo on a razor edge, a remix of parallel times, the ludicrous sincerity of rhythm keeping the paces of joy and pain in synch. The Irrational Library’s is that score that settles the score for the under-scored.”
“A halo on a razor edge, a remix of parallel times, the ludicrous sincerity of rhythm keeping the paces of joy and pain in synch. The Irrational Library’s is that score that settles the score for the under-scored.”
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