ONE MORE FINAL I NEED YOU “We Loved Each Other and It Was Awful” (Already Dead)



I figured that forthcoming H. Jon Benjamin Sub Pop album was going to splice comedy and jazz together in such a way as to truly redefine each genre, but I was missing the real action. Turns out that improv trio One More Final I Need You’s We Loved Each Other and It Was Awful is where the real laughs are. Well, if we’re talking laughs like everybody’s so pathetic that it’s funny – think early Noah Baumbach, maybe – then we’ve nailed the comedy part of this equation. As I listen to Taylor Campbell, Bob Bucko Jr., and Landon Deaton mope through the title track that opens the album for almost ten minutes, I’m struck at a deep level just how appropriate the words “love” and “awful” go together, and how much that makes me laugh. Am I a sadistic bastard? Have I, a family man, lost touch with reality?

 

“Does Anyone Actually Ever Kill Themselves?” answers that question with another question, or maybe it doesn’t really answer it, only lurches through demonic swing while illustrating the highs and lows of whatever it is that’s actually being illustrated. This is where it goes – We Loved Each Other and It Was Awful is sweetness turned sickening, of rotting feelings and intentions wilting before our eyes and sometimes flung at us at high velocity. But Campbell, Bucko, and Deaton are game, ready to rip our festering hearts out and pepper them with shrapnel from horns and guitars and drums and whatnot. (Basically those three.) We feel good while we feel bad, and vice versa.

 

That’s a good trick for the music to play! Mostly I feel good though, and as I’ve mentioned with my chuckling above, it’s because of the naming conventions. How else are you going to approach “Erectional-Based Disasters” or “To Hell with Their Punishments!”? (To be fair, the second half of the titles aren’t quite as funny, and one is even uninventively called “Interlude.”) Plus, I’m not sure something like “Eggs in an Old Box” is even possible, unless they’re fresh eggs served, for some reason, in the titular box – otherwise they’d stink pretty bad over time. Whatever, I’m overthinking this. One More Final I Need You is always rapturously fascinating, and We Loved Each Other and It Was Awful is no exception. It’s probably even more rapturously fascinating given that title. Nice work, gents!

 

https://omfiny.bandcamp.com/

 

https://alreadydeadtapes.bandcamp.com/

 

--Ryan