Eric Copeland is a genius at killing mosquitoes. Where I chase them around the room clapping my hands together around empty air, he follows the little monster's flight with just his eyes, waiting for it to approach his body. When it gets close enough, he raises one arm under its body, and the bug is still, momentarily surprised (I think) by being suddenly landed. At this point Eric destroys the mosquito with his other hand.
I'm sure you know somebody that seems to have a fuller understanding of the world, who knows what days the parking ticket cops come by, which apple is the crispest, where to stand to see the most shooting stars, which side of the street to walk on to avoid being hassled. The one you'd pick if you were lost on the side of the mountain and needed to make your way back home. Eric is the prince of those people. I'm pretty sure he always knows the best way to do things, is involved in some kind of deeper conversation with the world that keeps him aware of the best path, always.
Which sort of explains his music and sort of makes it the most baffling sound ever. Because it seems like anyone that in tune with the world around us would be able to communicate on an intense level with other people, but I don't know what these sounds are trying to tell me. I think maybe this kind of communication requires a non-human language, a set of sounds that scratches deeper. I have been known to complain about feeling left out, to show frustration at not understanding. But with the songs on "Hermaphrodite", I find myself concentrating and thinking through my own confusion, rather than dismissing it.
For the first couple weeks of September I saw Eric play every night. He always started with the most difficult songs he had; crushing, shaking sandstorms that thickened the air, made lungs feel useless. I watched people stumble, move too slowly and squint at their friends, completely overwhelmed for the first 10 minutes of his set. I felt the same way. It took him 2/3rd of the show to get to "FKD", and no matter how many times I saw him play I always ended up stopping everything to watch him play that song. I always had this feeling that the harshness of the set was a necessity to really connect with "FKD", like some part of the subwoofers rattling your ribcage and filling your stomach with cement was teaching you the language to understand "FKD." A lot's been said about the cover of "Hermaphrodite", and listening to the song now, isolated from the rest of the record, it feels as scary and alien as the cover looks. But it is the moment that I saw the most people caught by Eric's set, and represents the most vivid redefinition of beauty that the record projects. The rising skip of the rhythm makes it feel like some kind of inhuman ritual, but one you'd join in on, instead of run away from.
There's so many voices in the song: some emerge quickly, crowding right in front of your eyes, while others lurk behind the delay, long-fingered phantoms that seem content with keeping the song in subtle order. Every time I try and follow one I find myself led astray by a second voice, a third; sometimes I just fall backwards into this tiny chime of bells. But it's nice not being in control for once, a complete opposite of the pop songs I'm usually in love with, the ones that shamelessly sing out their clarity. And then it makes me almost hungry, like I want more from everything, like I deserve to feel this swarmed, this misled and retaught by every song.
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