The Vitality of Community
A Review of the Compilation THREADS ON MY ART (vol. 1)
Over the course of the past several months, I have delved into the artist Kid Lightbulbs, the appellation used by the ridiculously talented musician Brandon Lucas Green for two independently-released albums.
Starting with 2023’s Throw Myself Into the Bay, Kid Lightbulbs established a knack for songs with incredibly intricate interweaving musical and lyrical themes. This was continued and expanded earlier this year with the album Step Into The Ocean.
Green loves to play with music, often reworking his own songs in various arrangements, often more quiet and expressive piano or keyboard versions. He also started reworking some other songs from artists on Threads, the newish social network where he, I, and a host of others gather to share music we love, and many make themselves. People really liked Green’s reinterpretations of their songs and the idea was born to pay back the favor.
The result is out today on Bandcamp, the 13-track album THREADS ON MY ART (vol. 1), which reworks songs from the Kid Lightbulbs catalogue for charity and pure musical joy. Throughout the two Kid Lightbulbs albums, a broad sonic palette allows for places where these artists are interpreting not just the sonic vectors, but really the whole structure of the song.
The THREADS tribute is packed tightly with exquisite talent, the variety of which is truly mindboggling. It will take many repeat listenings to tease out the depth of genius in these songs, so I will focus on a couple songs I am very familiar with in the Kid Lightbulbs versions.
(As I listen to the compilation more, I will revise and add more about all the songs.)
John Malmborg has done a beautifully smooth interpretation of “belly,” a collaboration between Green and lyricist Teresa Cychosz. The original is a highlight on the Step Into the Ocean album and Malmborg’s version maintains this distinction.
Jordan Coley’s version of “trendsetters” off the Step album recasts the music with ska inflections and straightfoward vocals. I should mention here that the range of vocals on these covers is a joy to hear. Instrumentation and arrangement differences are expected in a “tribute” project, but the ways the artists have chosen to sing these songs really expands listening pleasure. Green’s own vocals are tightly correlated to the emotions of the lyrical themes he’s exploring, and to hear other singers pull out different pieces of those emotions in their own vocals and treatments expands the interpretations and makes them more personal and universal at once.
AsteRhythm offers a great cover of “ritual” that I need to spend much more time with. Bobbie LePage featuring Emmarockstar does the same with “digression.”
I am a big fan of Twelve Days In June’s rock, and I was looking forward to his take on “st. alphonsus.” It is big and riffy, as I had hoped it would be. Guitar-forward rock allows the vocals to sit perfectly in the middle while the heavier music washes through the listener.
SuperScience does something similar with “lashing out!!!!!!.” The track recalls both early 90s and mid 80s Ministry with heavier guitars and processed vocals intermixed with synths.
Perhaps the most interesting take on the THREADS album is “Oxycodone” by BKFitz. The original has become one of my favorite Kid Lightbulbs songs, and I really enjoy BKFitz’s complellingly original surf punk style. The melding of the two results in a quirky song that demands close listening to tease out the multiple layers.
Starting with drums and bass establishing the song’s core rhythm, then a good repeating guitar line, the most striking difference in BKFitz’s version is the vocal delivery. With an almost deadpan take, you can’t quite suss out at first whether we are meant to take the “We really think that it’ll help” refrain seriously or not. And, in a way, the first minute of the lyrics don’t carry a lot of weight.
Then the song kicks into a higher gear, with heavier guitars and processed vocals revealing more desperation in the message. Now we can feel that the deadpanning was a sort of mask, similar to the way the “Doctor” character in Pink Floyd’s “Comfortably Numb” functions — here the We is not us, it is outside us, presumably the collective voice of the pharmacology industry — and by the time we realize the seriousness of the vocals it is already too late. But it is also inside us. We are addicted, deep underwater and as we hit the midpoint of the song, BKFitz’s delivery is deeply serious and then even more desperate. As the song resolves in its last quarter, the music takes us spiraling down, slowly and methodically until it becomes completely unhinged.
One of the great ideas here is that as people coming from different areas, each musician is allowed or has the ability to connect on an emotional level, as well as the sonic one which seriously is the kind of interpretation that happens with all great cover songs, but in the case of a full tribute album this is the throughline. Recent mainstream tributes based on Stop Making Sense and Lou Reed’s catalogue have a broader popular scope, with fewer surprising versions. When a diverse group of artists rather than thoose who belong to a single genre, the result may end up more of a smorgasbord than a cohesive project. Not to worry, the THREADS album works as well as can be expected.
