PSA: Free Good music

I considered doing a Defense of Poppery on Good, the band whose EP I've most recently, freely and legally downloaded, except that "poppery" was always meant to refer to popular culture -- emphasis on popular -- to show that just because something's popular doesn't make it automatically artistically reprehensible. But I'm pretty sure Good isn't "popular"; the fact that their music lists itself as "avantgarde" in my Windows Media Player is a pretty good indication of their limited following, I think.

They are interesting, though, and more interesting the more you listen to them.

The EP can be downloaded at the Deconomics Records website, which gives away all its music. So far, there are three albums up, representing the solo efforts of each Mike and Paul, and the Good EP, which is their collaboration.

"Good" the album is approximately to music what The Forbidden Zone is to movies; you don't necessarily like it while it's on, but afterward you find yourself laughing and quoting it, and relating a bizarre number of things that happen to you subsequently, back to this experience.

How did I ever organize my experience before having this point of reference? you begin to wonder.

Well, in the case of "Good," that's an easy answer. The EP is "Donkey Kong" themed -- so presumably, you used the Donkey Kong game itself to make sense of those barrel-throwing, banana-peel-slipping, ladder-climbing moments in life when you thought you'd just never get ahead.

"Good" transcends Donkey Kong, though, in that way that all things meta transcend their subjects.

The lyrics of the opening song, "Kongsturn," include the lines "Music must drink the blood of those we have sacrificed" and "one two three your palace is just another place" and a dramatic, self-conscious evil laugh.

"Consider the ghost" includes the sound from an original Star Trek episode in the background of an ethereal ambient harp-ish music. Eventually, voices join the two sounds (which work in a bizarre harmony with each other), singing "I'm hung over" in equally ethereal tones.

Add to all of this mysterious postmodern comment on, well, whatever, the fact that the band's singing voices just aren't that good. In fact, you kind of wish they would stop singing and let the music speak for them sometimes. (But even the bad singing is addictive, a la Squeezit Henderson's incessant arm-flapping in The Forbidden Zone.)

What are they trying to say here?

Well, in what is either an excellent reason to completely dismiss the band as crazy, or an excellent follow-through to complete unintelligibility on their part, or both, the write-up for "Good" says of itself that "the Good EP is the noise that our subconscious minds recognize as the shuffling feet of an empty-handed band presiding over the interment of power pop's unoccupied casket."

I can kind of see the casket thing, actually, and definitely the empty-handed band -- I mean, the original Star Trek as "music"; very interesting -- but the "unoccupied casket"? Does that mean power pop isn't dead, but should be? Is it running around zombie-like out there, preying on other genres or media?

Isn't that exactly what "Good" is doing, though?

You go ahead and decide for yourself. I've listened to the EP three times through while writing this review and become more convinced by it every time...then find myself inevitably asking convinced of what?

Besides, it's free, and that's always Good.