This is part of a series of reviews for December/January attempting to catch up on 2008 releases.
What Did You Do During the War, Daddy? is like R.E.M. doing a 60’s rockabilly concept album. The Jet Age’s Eric Tischler wrote the album as the soundtrack for an imaginary musical about a revolutionary American suicide bomber. The frenetic flight line pace of “If I Had You Then I’d Still Want You Now” comes on like the Britrock of Spearmint, the College Rock of Death Ray and Golden Shoulders, heavy doses of the Who, plus Tischler’s voice picks up on the Outfield’s Tony Lewis.
“Dance” gets its distinctive plot from Pete Nuwayser’s garage band drums sounding very much like they were inspired by being recorded in Tischler’s basement. Nuwayser’s continue their salt seasoning work on “O Calendar,” smashing up the dance rocked soul disco guitar. That brings the album to the end of Act I.
Act II begins with the Posies/Teenage Fanclub fuzzy drowsiness of “Shake” which is then broken up with a flash-in-the-pan reminder of Act I’s drums. “Dumb” has much of this same arc with a little more pogoing guitar soloing. “I Said, ‘Alright’” again takes the same theme musically but calms it down just a bit. . .a little bit.
Here we are then at Act III. “Now We Are Three” starts with a guitar/bass musing akin to the vistas painted by the Doors, growing to such towering banks of sound clouds coming right over the Hollywood Bowl in front of those banks of speakers. For “False Idols” the soul stutter disco guitar is back driving our story to its conclusion. Our hero is speaking from beyond the grave about lofty ideas—faith, forgiveness, and loss—while also worrying about the kids reading his old writings.
This brings us to “Maybe Love’s a Transmission,” a musical’s finale drawing in hints of the entire work. It starts eternal life in the face, a nameless god, a nameless destination, a hopeless hope that it won’t matter in the end but still he’d be taken to be somewhere along the nameless dreams.
As the stage fades to black, the reprise returns to the opening vaudevillian “Ladies, Don’t Cry Tonight,” a wry, cruel, knowing song about encouraging the women to be strong when their men go off to war—even when we know they won’t all come home, and certainly won’t come home if the intention is to be a suicide bomber. Tischler sings, “And should you be all alone/come the sunrise/still, life must go on.” And there’s no drums left to smash that reality up.
