The Canadian Indie Rock Canon #23: Spookey Ruben – Modes of Transportation Vol. 1
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Look I’ll say it now even though I’m going to betray my own words in the next few sentences. I hate how every quirky oddball band is called “ahead of its time” just because they found success later in life. I think it’s often less to do with its current climate (I’m looking at you Captain Beefheart) and more of likeminded people discovering the sharing the music together. With that being said let me declare that Canadian Indie Rock fixture Spookey Ruben was ahead of his time. This is less to do with the general weirdness of music, which combines found sound sampling, folk guitar, Muppet-to-Gahan vocals and XTC whimsy and turns it into deeply odd but incredibly refreshing art pop, but it has more to do with the man himself. The musician, producer, filmmaker and visual artist would be at home on the internet age where the extent of his multimedia artistic assault could be better appreciated and easier to tie together. I mean just look at this album cover and tell me this isn’t some precursor vaporwave shit that would look perfect as a Bandcamp thumb nail? While Spookey Remains very active in all his endeavors and released a number of albums his debut Modes of Transportation Vol. 1 remains a high light in his discography.
Born Allan Dell Spookey Ruben’s eclectic upbringing matches his eclectic music. The son of an ESA Engineer Spookey travelled the world, growing up in Germany, the Netherlands and Washington DC. His parents encouraged him to take up classical guitar as a hobby. During his teen years Spookey would play mostly in hardcore and speed metal bands in DC’s underground rock scene most notably heading the band Transilience. He earned the nickname “Spooky” due his long hair and satanic T-shirts. Spookey would eventually move to Toronto at age 19 where he attended York University’s film school but continued to record music on a four-track recorder. Much of his early home recording experiments lead to the tracks on Modes of Transportation Vol. 1.
“Terra Magnifica” starts with some chopped up 50’s monster movie music before quickly washing away into a whimsical intro to the album, complete with children’s choir and Spookey flexing his elastic voice, going from an insanely deep narrator to the an angelic reverb heavy choir boy declaration. Quickly following it is “These Days Are Old”, where Spookey falsetto yodels greet us before jangly acoustic guitar pairs with Spookey’s strange observations of everyday life. Despite the general oddness of everything going on (made even more insane when viewed with the song’s accompanying video) Spookey doesn’t lose sight of the hooks. “These Days are Old” is an indelible ear worm despite its bizarre trappings and you’ll be going “Oooh loo – loo / Ooh ya - ya - ya! /Oh - yeah!” in your head for days. Spookey enjoys exploring various sounds, take “Welcome to the House of the Food” which combines electronic and hip hop production while Spookey espouses on his desire for cake. It’s the sort of genre hopping that wouldn’t be out of place on Odelay.
Spookey definitely feels like his element when a healthy dose of whimsy is added to his songs. Taking cues from the likes of the Beach Boys and XTC Spookey’s songs with a fey quality really shine. Take Crystal Cradle with its cash register dings and music box intro quickly slides into a reverb heavy underwater experience as his voice goes into a baritone saying that “you’re holding me down, down.” Meanwhile on “Wendy McDonald” NES synths match up with Spookey’s swinging vocals as he lovingly discusses the merits of fast food drive thrus. “Donate Your Heart To A Stranger” is a dreaming journey that sees heavy vocal modulation reflecting the phases Spookey as a spacey and dreadfilled music amplify Spookey’s confusion. Everything from strings to ticking clocks are used to amplify the song.
If there’s any single personification of Spookey’s music its final track “Life Insurance.” Despite it being only five minutes long the song is in three parts. First part “snowman” is an echo heavy acoustic piece that transitions with quick cut vocals and angelic vocals that turn into the sped up “deepsea diver.” The songs ends with quick plucking and barely audible found dialog on “stolen car” as Spookey sweetly goes “la la la” over a man talking about how he turned to stealing cars to deal with his drug problem. He finishes the album by saying “every cage is the same size.”
Wildly imaginative and daringly eclectic Modes of Transportation Vol. 1 finds the balance between the quirky and the approachable. Spookey never found much success (except in, I guess obviously, Japan) but it’s not odd to think that him and this album should’ve been able to find a larger audience besides the likes of Beck, Ween and The Flaming Lips. Whether he’s able to find a following now is moot, this to me is one of the best odd pop albums ever made and deserves people to give it a chance.
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(Tentative) Schedule
February 4: Alexisonfire - Alexisonfire
February 11: Sunset Rubdown - Dragonslayer
February 18: Joel Plaskett Emergency - Down At The Khyber
February 25: Fucked Up - David Comes To Life
Archive
Submitted January 29, 2019 at 12:51AM by rccrisp http://bit.ly/2FY5GYO
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