![]() "PROSTITUTION!" screams Robinson on the second track. Now that those footings have been fleshed out into rock songs with lyrics added by Robinson, Wenner might think twice about using them to put his kiddies softly to sleep. Guitarist, keyboardist and composer Niko Wenner based the new songs on tunes he would sing to his young children. The music itself, we are told, comes from a place of love. ![]() Then again, if you flip any of the above items on its head or consider the true sentiment behind all this, it could feasibly be in the spirit of "Why can't we just get along, man?" Oxbow: brutal noise-rock's answer to The New Seekers. A lot of Robinson's lyrics have also been inspired by love affairs gone horribly sour. (On 1995's Let Me Be A Woman Robinson shifted his attention, wisely enough, towards the "many who deserved to die a lot more readily than I did.") Lingering in the background has been a hatred of the various oppressive systems and terrible human traits that keep us forever divided and universally destructive. (Robinson has described the first two LPs as notes for a suicide that, fortunately, he didn't commit, partly because those records happened to be so well-received). People could also be forgiven for believing that a lot of the band's material has actually focused on hate. Oxbow's 1989 debut was titled Fuckfest, not a phrase that appears on many commercially produced Valentine's cards. It is easy to understand why listeners missed the overriding theme. "But now listening to a record of exclusively love songs I can see how no one saw that." "I've always been chagrined that no one understood that our songs were love songs," says vocalist Eugene Robinson. That said, the promo sheet for Oxbow's eighth album brings to mind the thoughts of a certain hippie-ish knight of the realm. Perhaps Cupid has been enjoying a couple of relaxing weeks in the Algarve before he straps the quiver back on and returns to the business of arrowing Hellenistic Viagra into the pulses of suitable couples. The slightly ambiguous title of Oxbow's new record could suggest the absence of love, however temporary. Peace, love and understanding doesn't tell the half of it. There's also McCartney's accidental Manson-rouser, 'Helter Skelter', and Harrison's expression of resentment towards paying tax. What about McCartney's incongruously jaunty song about a hammer-wielding psychopath that almost drove his fellow band members loopy because he insisted on recording so many takes? Or 'Paperback Writer', written to meet the explicit challenge of avoiding the subject of love altogether and thus opening the door to a world of possibilities? There are Lennon's crueller, sorrowful or more surreal moments, plus that postmodern piece about the onion. ![]() There's a very good spirit behind it all." While this makes for a moment of rose-tinted warmth, especially after George Harrison's typically gloomier observation about The Beatles having sacrificed their "nervous systems" to the masses, the exceptions are plentiful. Most of their songs, he claims, "dealt with love, peace, understanding. Towards the end of The Beatles' Anthology documentary, Paul McCartney makes a cheerful sweeping statement about his old band's back-catalogue.
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