A TALE OF APES

For Hero: For Fool begins with a pair of tracks “A Tale of Apes I & II.” The first of which is a furious account of a gaudy stage show in which the performer unzips his ape suit to reveal an anchor tattoo, a pair of roller-skates and the knowledge that he has nothing worth saying; leading the crowd in a call and response of “Everything is empty.”

Both of Subtle’s albums have been followed by a remix-remake EP in which the album tracks are torn apart and re-conceived in collaboration with other artists. Yell&Ice, the remix companion to For Hero: For Fool, includes a one-off cLOUDDEAD reunion. “Falling,” their reinvention of “A Tale of Apes I,” is surely the clubbiest track the group has ever produced; its dancefloor synths are anchored by Yoni Wolf’s instructions “to better get a North Star underneath your tongue”––the hope for a better sense of direction.

But it’s the second of the original pair, “A Tale of Apes II,” that tells a story more in fitting with cLOUDDEAD’s origins. In it, a pair of guerilla artists in a basement apartment make absurd installation art: a sculpture of a bucket of blood, hand prints traced across the floor and covered in egg yolks and a black and white photograph of “Einstein growing frustrated over a sinkful of dirty dishes.” The imagined photograph recalls Doseone’s statement on the frustrations of living with collaborator-friends––even when you believe them to be geniuses––in the 2004 Wire profile: “It’s really hard to believe in your friend as this incredible artist that you share all this stuff with and then you’re cleaning his dishes.”

In For Hero: For Fool’s liner notes, Doseone writes of “A Tale of Apes II,” “This song is an ode to the touching and affecting time Why? and Adam had back in the Apartment A [in] Cincinnati [during] … cLOUDDEAD days, influencing and pushing one another to the lip of our potential.” The antithesis of the first ape track, the song is a tribute to the pleasure and occasional frustrations of art created in community rather than a solitary ego blasting from the stage; a testament to the fun and self-discovery of the time in which cLOUDDEAD shared apartments and created an enclave in which it was safe to get strange.

––Ben Bush

"The Hollows,” a new single from Why?, will be released on November 27 with their next full length, Alopecia, due out in March. Subtle’s new album, ExitingArm, is scheduled to arrive in May.

(Photos on pgs. 1 and 2 by Jessica Miller)

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