Album Fragments is a series where I look back at albums that have had a fundamental impact on my life. Today I take a look at Andrew W.K.’s 2006 album Close Calls With Brick Walls.
“Did you come for the sound?”
A simple question that leads off the enigmatic king of parties Andrew W.K.’s 2006 third album Close Calls With Brick Walls. An album that has become something of a forgotten anomaly in Andrew’s admittedly small but surprisingly varied discography that includes off detours into classical piano and covers of songs from the Japanese anime Gundam. Part of the album’s relative obscurity has to do with the years of legal disputes and bad contracts Andrew signed early in his career that prevented a U.S. release of the album outside of a limited vinyl run on the noise label Load until 2010. Which makes it all the more odd that this album,rather than his far more famous 2002 debut I Get Wet, was my introduction to the man.
I was first made aware of Andrew W.K. in the summer of 2007 right before I was to start my first year of high school. A friend of mine who had been going through a bought of depression had started obsessively listening to Andrew after hearing his song “We Want Fun” in Jackass: The Movie. My friend became attracted to Andrew’s overwhelming message of fun and positivity in his music and that became something of a comfort for him while he was going through a difficult time. Of course, me being the pretentious angsty fourteen year old that I was, I scoffed at the idea that an artist with titles like “Party Hard” and “Party Til’ You Puke” could possibly have anything to offer to someone into grunge and the “existential pain” of bands like Nine Inch Nails. However, my friend eventually convinced me to give Andrew a shot by burning me a bootleg copy of his then most recent album Close Calls… which I begrudgingly sat down and listened to.
I was instantly blown away by the sound. The album was nothing like I expected. Instead of a modern day Poison, I was given an album full of weird ambient interludes like “Close Calls With Bal Harbour” and “Dr. Dumont,” odd song sketches like “Golden Eyed Dog,” and should be power pop classics like “You Will Remember Tonight” and the 60s girl group inspired “Don’t Call Me Andy.” An even bigger surprise was that the album contained zero songs with “party” in the title (unless one is to count the bonus track “Big Party” which is a banger in its own right). I fell in love with the album and it became a recurring part of my rotation for the next year. Eventually I went back and listened to “I Get Wet” and “The Wolf” and I understood that Andrew was less the second coming of 80s frat rock and more Ramones meets Jim Steinman.
As much as I grew to love his other albums, what keeps drawing me back to Close Calls is the spirit of artist freedom that flows throughout. The album has an anything goes vibe that isn’t as present amongst the massive Phil Spectoresque Walls of Sound that his other conventional rock albums are bound to. This spirit of expression and experimentation feels closer to Andrew’s artistic roots than his other albums. After I fell down the rabbit hole that is Andrew W.K., I was surprised to find out his musical roots were less arena rock bands like Kiss and Van Halen and more experimental noise rock bands like the avant-garde Wolf Eyes. Andrew grew up in the college town of Ann Arbor, Michigan which has a rich underground music scene full of bands that aren’t bound by conventional rules of what a band is supposed to be.
In a 2013 interview with Westword, Andrew described growing up around this underground music scene in Ann Arbor as “this very far out, sort of psychedelic radical mode of life that rubbed off on everybody in one way or another. I just kind of hooked on that feeling of newness and having your mind blown. Once you get really into that feeling, you want search out more and more new mind blowing experiences.” This idea of seeking out new mind blowing experiences seems to be the underlying theme of Close Calls and are especially evident in songs like the anthemic closing track “The Moving Room” which seems to be about traveling through life taking in each and every new experience to its full capacity or “The Background” about leaping forward from the background of life and taking control.
It’s a shame that this album was delayed a widespread release for so long because of its relative obscurity Andrew hardly ever plays any of these songs live. I know I would be thrilled to hear Andrew bust out “Don’t Call Me Andy or “When I’m High” and I’m sure there are more that would love to hear them too. In any case, Close Calls With Brick Walls is worth seeking out and is proof that Andrew is an artist worth taking seriously beyond his “party hard” message.
“Did you come for the sound?”
Yes, yes we did. And the sound delivered.