Rocko’s newest (old) album is right on time for Christmas, late…
Meltin in the North
This is a funny take on Jimmy Hendrix. Rocko informed me that he didn’t write this bassline. He wrote all the instrumentals for every other song, except this and the last song. This is a humorous song. Rocko is a very funny dude, but he has a subtlety with his moments of deep sadness.
Head Above Water
Here’s Rocko’s sadness. Throughout Rocko’s music, there is a deep sense of cartoon nature to all of it, in touch with absurdity and “film baby.
Petty Things
He doesn’t like to sell out, which is why I’m thinking of buying this album. This is a collection of songs that he made, and scrapped, while going through the motions. To make a buck, one wonders if they’ll have to toss their love away, in order to succeed in this mindless material world. Thankfully, Rocko has a collection of friends, like this collection of songs, that he decided to release for history. I also find it necessary to release works of art, even if they are “unsellable,” because people including myself are impacted by one artist’s junk as their own inspirational gold. What pisses me off about the industry standard is that people don’t take risks. Rocko takes risks, or maybe is more like a raw original artist willing to release what might only be enjoyed by the die-hards, like me. Some day, we won’t need to die so hard to appreciate true genius. Once we stop selling out.
Ride
Hopeless romance? Well it appears this way, but Rocko has actually been in a stable relationship for some time now. We’re all happy for him. He keeps his personal love life pretty simple, sacred, and secret (private), unlike the rest of himself; we’re happy he’s willing to share what might still be emotions he feels even while in a loving relationship. We all have the capacity to be lonely, even when we’re with the best fit we could ever hope to understand. Noone truly is able to understand the complexity of another person’s soul, not even the possessor of the soul can quite understand itself at times.
A Big Boy Booty Ya
The first word that comes to mind with this song is depression grunge, minus the raspy voice. It is droning and dismal. It feels like he’s about to give up singing this song, but somehow makes it through the mundane chant, becoming absurdly funny in the end, after its aimless repetition. It’s like a sort of new age, walk-about, or meditation. There’s another meditation song later in the album.
Poopy Day
This song is full of amazing drums. It’s pretty tribal sounding in my islander opinion. It reminds me of the Super Nintendo game, Joe and Mac. There are plenty of dinosaurs roaming the planet and there is some sort of ritualistic harnessing going down on this Poopy Day.
Axe of Goob
Beat machine sounding. I asked Rocko if he programmed or did live drums (or both) and I’m pretty sure he does both. This is psychedelic roaming. It kind of reminds me of U2. Maybe my vocabulary for psychedelic rock is a bit off, I don’t think U2 is necessarily a psych rock band, but the way he sings in this song reminds me of them.
March 4th
Tight drums again and solid cartoony concept about wanting to score a date, but self sabotaging. It has a cool ending where he lands the date in the end. Cute and punk, like Rocko.
Ol’ Left Luther
This is Elvis Blues. Rocko is a social commentator and this album is truly genre-less or like an array of different cultures and sounds that somehow fit into the film-baby registry. Rocko is a pioneer of film-baby, noted by his use of heavy variation in personality and narrative structure, vibrant and rich, each song lending to a different scene of the world. You don’t get much variety from Pop music, which often just deals with one ego or voice crying out to the world to pay attention. Rocko is a pioneer of “film-baby” because he gives you multiple caricatures to choose from. Maybe they are all different people within the same universe, hence the structure of a “film” and the cartoon innocence of a “baby.”
USB
Butt rock to the core except instead of USA chants, it’s the new virtual USB empire. Born in the USB. But then there’s something truly punk about the vasectomy lines, almost sounding like a Bevis and Butthead mantra.
Japanese Text
This is my favorite track of the whole album. It reminds me of some retro future. A time that felt far out in the future, while existing entirely in the past. I wonder what the words are, as I don’t speak Japanese. I’m part Japanese, I learned just recently, but only in the distance on my family tree. This song is cool. Rocko went to Japan to do some film work for his movie, Flapjacks.
Japanese Text 2
A Japanese karaoke lounge. This is where the high rollers hang out and drink non-alcoholic drinks and look at beautiful babes. They all drive cool cars and wear nice velvet and leather jackets. They know how to hit the 8-Ball at the end of any game.
Eating Food
This is a beautiful song that’s almost in the style of what I’ve come to know Rocko’s love ballad style. He definitely has some consistency strung throughout his vox, you just have to listen to his other tracks to pick up on it. This is funny because this might be a love song that goes both ways, love lost in love still with the delicious food!
Beelzbub
Another programmed drum machine? This is another highlight of Rocko’s perfect use of tempo. And it sounds like he’s introduced as an evil wizard, or the devil himself. I can’t tell if this is Rocko’s voice or if he took it from a movie. I wouldn’t be surprised either way. Rocko has an eclectic taste and has done some deep dives into worlds not many can say they’ve explored. I love the blues progression in this one.
Fushigi
Ok, I think this might be live drumming now. Super cool. It kind of reminds me of Beck. It has a nice drive to it. Nice momentum. Like eating at an all you can eat, and going for gold!
The Pretzel Shop
Ha! Rocko puts in the cheers of an audience, just as we’d expect for a 4th wall breaker like this “film-baby” genius. Here he comes across as a pro-wrestling punk rocker, on his way to….a pretzel shop of all things, and the crowd goes wild! Fuck yeah! Let’s get some pretzels!
Alien Mediation
Sounds like Pikmin. This is definitely like a retro alien flick. With its paper board cut outs and styrofoam aliens. Really cool.
Pumpkin
Lolz, an ode to the times…Hyper Pop, lmao.
Another Japanese Daydream
Truly a natural wonder this song. Very relaxing and soothing, not being sarcastic. Very peaceful and like a traditional trip to the gardens of paradise.
Georgemas
And he closes it out with a message to the lord and savior himself. George.
Show dogs- a circus 🎪; Rocko offers more character than most music currently in the scene. Compared to other corporal safety packages unwilling to be cartoony, or independent, Rocko goes to an original place.
Appreciate the retro vibe synth chords and smooth baseline, the drumming is Rocko’s signature, and it is always naturally inclusive.
For sure-
Reminds me of the cure, very touchable. Really enjoy the Vox layers, again most ppl are not willing to layer their Vox with different personalities, all too focused on vocal packaging (is it in key) rather than going the next step toward Vox texture and personality; the album is a show, as we move along nicely,
The commuter-
The show continues with this one. This time most narratively explicit as we carry on with our drudging lives on the “computer” like finger typing “commuters”
The chorus is a beautiful break down, followed up with a razor guitar like synth, almost like a julian Casablancas riff, or like a Kanye Synth Vox riff,
The claps and outro make this album a clear communal opportunity to join in on the fun.
Anxia-T
Now we’re talking about anthropomorphic emotion, with a relentless bass, which Rocko was able to learn amicably well within a year of practice in his later musical career, with drums again being his main thing. It’s funny, the drums are always so nicely put together that yu don’t notice their genius nature. Like yu forget this is all on time, because yu forget about time, the natural cure to anxiety.
Fear of suffering is my favorite song. I’ve listened to this album once before, and this is the one that hooks me. It’s midway through the album. And a lot like the monster in “I need you dead,” this is not a place you’d want to be in the reality of life, but it’s nice to come here musically and artistically. You can hear the creature breathing. It’s a hollow dry bones of a beast, death just around the corner, as he sings (in a macabre (lol this word)) vocally about his mother’s love for him.
Japanese song-
This is where he practices his love of the Japanese language. And I’m sure he’s making sense. He doesn’t explicitly say he’s doing a correct Japanese accent, thank god, because there is a sense of humor here, while doing the melodic chant, “I wanna get back in Japan.” He does this with multiple characters of Vox, including a sensual (seemingly) woman who’s engaging in an orgasm. Maybe I’m mishearing it, lol
Human being-
This is where the 4th wall comes in. It’s about humanity, perhaps in Rocko’s most sentimental and natural tone of voice. Here he leaves the characters behind and goes inward into the 4th dimension. Here he dips us into his real heart for us to examine, perhaps flawed, but who isn’t.
Man-
An old school psychedelic rock ballad. My favorite metaphor is sung here, “sailing down the birth canal,” red walls and all. Here he’s happy, and no one’s gonna take the awe from him here. On the proposed journey of the unique, and of the unknown. He gives yu the awe that we perhaps have come close to understanding only when young or hallucinating. His usage of shakers is a must, always turning the rhythms into subtlety. You get your oohs and awes in this one.
Then it all reaches a climax and you just wanna reach out and hug the mother fucker. Rocko is a legend, as we all know, and this first EP, if ending here would be a classic, but there’s two more songs to write about.
Jesus-
Does Rocko believe in being saved? He certainly was raised in a Christian household, but does he really think god can save him? Here he does a preacher’s voice, and this is actually more anxiety sounding than Anxia-T, in a doomsday kind of what; maybe Rocko is coming to terms with his spiritual identity here, again through art,
The song sounds like a train chugging along frantically in search of something deeper than blind faith.
Tom Waits:
I had to look up this actor up–he’s also a singer. Film and movies, a big theme for the album and for Rocko’s life. This song is a pub crawl about Lov. I’m not sure Rocko drinks or not, but this song is definitely one to be played over a good brew. Who’s he hoping not to fall in love with? Is it someone who resembles his mom from previous tracks, or is this someone new? What’s Rocko so afraid of love for?? The album tells us there’s a lot to fear, like emotions of losing innocence. Does Rocko really want to retell another story about love, after losing his own innocence?
Rocko’s first film is about a surrealist punk themed atmosphere and gives environmental context to his passion, film and art. His sophomore film, Flapjacks is supposed to be a look into his relationship with his mom.
While the 2nd film hasn’t even been finished, Perhaps this whole album gives insight into what the film might offer. The themes here are god, emotions, mother, and cartoony theatrics, all around a seamless tempo, unnoticeable drum sets that just come out so naturally paced. Rocko had mentioned wanting to do some scenes in Japan. He presents music and passion in only ways he can, and I’m curious to see where Japanese culture might influence his set.
I also wonder if rocko will eventually become one with the universe, as some sort of enlightened guru, in time. The man is only 24 years old. He’s got a bright future ahead of him.
Riding over-
Man, I’m writing a review because.
So this song reminds me,
Of the whole —
Rotten love—-dead lover—-
She was going to wait for as long as it took, even til death did she remain
Someday-
Shattered glass,
Like is it about drinking the pain away, a fight?
I seem happy? It suits you for me to feel happy while you remain sad?
Someday, like Tuesday —what about today…what about it, kinda attitude
Man in the moon-
A honeymoon with underwater waves, like maybe this is getting more hopeful. Like maybe it is possible to be soothed. More mmms and more humming—-like the ocean itself, pulled by the moon.
Like words
Silenced 🔕
What is the break after —instrumental break then back up for air,
Blood running warm, underneath the storm—but as she catches her breath, he’s gone again—-so what is it with Tuesday’s love looking a lot like her last—and I wonder if she’s catching the waves 🌊 just to catch the moment, even though she could never truly linger on just one for eternity …flipped upside down, she feels her love thrash at her, and she says she loves “you”
Maybe she just loves the moon —and we all represent different shades of its vibrancy, different angles of the universal “face”
Paul
If you kno the story, this was her high school crush, maybe her first moon beam—
The intro just cuts
It fuckin cuts
If you called I wouldn’t be appalled
But he never calls
So she wrote a song about him, and got to know his favorite color, baby blue—which she’s still falling for,
Life’s not fair because he was crying over someone —her.
Too bad, right?? Too bad he likes her, while she likes him, and I like her, while she likes him…the old fares-wheel of love seeking horizon in different depths of getting to kno the populous—-makes sense because this is her number one song on streaming.
It makes me cry consistently
Sorry:
Why she being called a bitch?? I wonder. She’s a good bitch from the north. Unlike the wicked bitch from the south.
Tuesday realizes that maybe the bitch is someone she sees in herself, or something she herself is capable of??
So she’s genuinely sorry. And it hits with an electric guitar riff. She’s sorry she thought she could love me, but I’m a fucker. And I just wanted to be seen, so I took advantage of her knowledge of art and tests,
Because
Even though I do want love, I realize artists are very similar in their approach to life and love. So maybe we’re all sorry for being the bitch. The jealous bitch we are.
But there’s a family involved entirely and there really is a final outcome of true love. So while I played the game and thought it was my time to stop being sorry, I guess some people actually figure it out for themselves and my art hangs loose having nothing to do with the people I hurt out of love, it just has to do with art and me…so oh well…poker face and all
Grace:
This is where I should breathe,
I think I wanna show this off —
I fuckin love this train song
lol—-unlike the color of sadness which can be accused as all being one color, it’s nice to know this album is sad, but with different hues and shades, grains—-this is a melancholy song that’s maybe a bit green
It Chugs along
Bruises:
This is Tuesday’s favorite song
Like was she physically bruised?
Man, y’all need to go fuck yourself—this song makes me angry—those fuckers need to talk to my father on the otherwise—I’m so sorry she’s experienced that shit. I don’t fight—-but this song makes me about ready to. And then I cry.
When she picks a fight she eats the beauty with the pain.
Claudia—
I think Tuesday is gay. She feels more relaxed here. She feels less threatened, she feels safe. Can’t help but relate it to the previous song with those previous men like me. I fuckin hate that I’m a man when I hear her pain, but I’m happy she hasn’t castrated us all into one category. I love her. She loves women here, and I think she should continue. She’s so beautiful 😻
I would be her cat and tamed if I could. I would give her the gun that only fired with her finger print. I just want her to feel safe. Claudia was safe.
Professor Faust
She and her father
Listen to it for yourself
A little girl and her absent father —there’s still time :) (not that he deserves it, but maybe there’s always room for closure or chapters turned) —looking forward to Tuesday’s next album
I’m definitely a fan Gurl