03 // More Than Horses: A guide to the music of The Unicorns
The Unicorns - left to right: Alden Penner, Nick Thornburn, Jamie Thompson
I mentioned in my post about Rose Melberg that an arguably earlier introduction to twee pop for me was The Unicorns in 2012. I say “arguably” because, while the band bears a number of hallmarks associated with the genre - clumsy, shambolic playing, unmistakably pop songwriting, a sense of nostalgic pining for childhood, general aura of cloying cuteness - their music is often stubbornly defiant of classification. It’s not too hard to place them into the “indie” ballpark, but much of their music is actively unconventional, often restlessly jumping from section to section, instrument to instrument, toying with balladry and call and response theatrics, relying much more heavily on synths and orchestral instrumentation than a typical indie pop band, lyrics almost totally devoid of the themes of romance that pop music so often clings to. They also reject a romantic, salad days approach to nostalgia despite sharing an indulgence of childlike whimsy with other twee pop bands; they’re much more interested in the imagined than the experienced, in fantasy over reality. Theirs is a realm seen through the glimpses of cartoonish album covers and lyrics about rainbows and ghosts, one much more erratic, fantastical, imaginative than those inhabited by average indie pop bands, and it’s made them a favourite band of mine.
The Unicorns recently announced a reunion tour accompanying Arcade Fire, a band that in their junior years a decade earlier had accompanied them on tour, as well as a reissue of their crowning achievement, 2003’s Who Will Cut Our Hair When We’re Gone? It’s a fitting year to do it; in 2004 they released The Unicorns: 2014, a 4-song EP with a title track detailing their plan to stay “side by side till 2025”. That plan seemed to have fallen through, though, after their breakup the same year, a result of rising tensions within the band between lead songwriters Alden Penner and Nicholas Thornburn. Cries of “2014 I STILL BELIEVE” in the band’s last.fm shoutbox seemed all but wishful thinking until a few a month ago when news surfaced that Alden was hinting at a reunion.
Of course, they hadn’t just been laying dormant for 10 years. Fans had plenty of solo material and side projects to enjoy - on Alden’s side, Clues, The Hidden Words, and his solo work, and on Nick’s side, Islands, Mister Heavenly, Th’ Corn Gangg, Reefer, Human Highway, a solo album under the name Nick Diamonds.
But let’s start from the beginning: The Unicorns’ first release was Three Inches of Blood, a 20-minute demo tape put out in 2002. It’s clear from the 3 short, bizarre interlude tracks which consist mostly of nonsensical vocal sounds, as well as the overall brevity of the album, that this represents the band in their nascency. it was, however, a springboard for greater things to come, including an early demo of The Unicorns: 2014, the title track of the aformentioned EP, and an early version of Jellybones, one of the singles from Who Will Cut Our Hair When We’re Gone? Other tracks included the ambitious, 7-minute epic of Ebb Tide, Azure Sky, ballistic rock freakout Do the Knife Fight, and lo-fi synth pop tune Peach Moon.
2003 was The Unicorns’ peak, seeing them release their debut album Unicorns are People Too along with its better-known follow-up. Admittedly, though I call Three Inches of Blood a demo, Unicorns Are People Too only really earns the distinction of “album” by virtue of its length (35 mins) and its distribution (a limited CD release on the band’s label) - they’re are just as audibly amateurish and unprofessional, even anti-professional, and the production quality is just as cheap and sloppy, despite the official capacity of the album’s release.
Cover art for Unicorns Are People Too
In some ways, Unicorns Are People Too could be said to be even more of a demo, because the tracklist, though longer and better-developed, feels much less confident and less engaging. Three Inches seems more like they were having fun with the idea which meant it was more brusque but also more enthused, whereas Unicorns Are People Too seems a lot more reticent and mumbled. Save for a few haywire drum machines and odd production quirks, it’s a fairly mild-mannered record, and it’s because of this that some of tracks that would be revamped for the following album (Child Star, Inoculate the Innocuous, Ghost Mountain, and I Was Born (A Unicorn), from which the album’s title is a lyric) appear much more undercooked and lacklustre here.
Still, it’s no shame to see the band dressing at little more conservatively; the romantic sparseness of 52 Favourite Things, the triumphant repetition of “everything’s OK in it’s own little way” on Evacuatin’ Somethin’ Warm (later reworked as Evacuate the Vacuous (Outtake) on their 2004 EP), the light-hearted swing of Thunder & Lightning (this might be William, Clap Your Hands on your copy, or even Inoculate the Innocuous, there seems to be some confusion over this), all go to show that they can pull it off. And don’t let me mislead you, there’s playful stuff here too - almost every track has it’s own odd sound effect, digital glitching and stuttering, vocal distortion, pitch-shifting, random reversed noises. It may be a plainer affair than expected, but that this is The Unicorns’ handiwork is unmistakable.
A few months down the line and we get the band’s momentous second album, this time on professional record label, Alien8 Recordings. It shouldn’t be understated that WWCOHWWG? is truly the cornerstone of The Unicorns’ discography. For one, it’s practically the only record of theirs that anyone’s heard of, and two, it far surpasses the ambition, prowess, creativity, humour, and straight up songwriting quality of the rest of their music by a country mile. Its lyrics are loosely based around the concept of death, with corroborating themes of ghosts, medicine, death anxiety eventually morphing into a death wish, and a subtextual conveyance of decay and decline, as well as less macabre concepts like fame and adventure. All this is veiled by cartoonish fantasy: I Was Born (A Unicorn), the band’s best known song, is about the supposed extinction of unicorns due to Noah’s neglect prior to the great flood, which our aptly named band has considerable objection to, complete with some pantomiming about who wears the pants in Alden and Nick’s songwriting relationship; Tuff Ghost is about a ghost who covers up the suffering he experiences because of his death with machismo, callousness, and self-reliance; Sea Ghost is an allegory for a bad relationship about a parasite that attaches onto the narrator who tries to get it off by going into the sea, then, after returning to the shore with the parasite gone, starts to have a blurry memory and second thoughts.
The morbidity of some of the lyrics is even less obvious because of the music, an undefinable concoction of amalgamated pop subgenres, often saccharine and whimsical and always eccentric and colourful. It’s as imaginative sonically as it is lyrically, painting a soundscape that mirrors the fantasy land sketched out by the lyrics, drawing on a wide set of both synthetic and traditional instruments, perfecting the lo-fi production and random sound effects of the previous two records, carrying a distinct aversion to traditional song structure with no song having a definite chorus, and flip-flopping across its 13 tracks, major to minor, upbeat to downbeat, fast to slow, pop to rock.
Their refusal to sit still is probably best exemplified halfway through the album with Child Star, the longest song on the album at 5 and a half minutes and a veritable odyssey in terms of songwriting. Beginning with a low-key, half-minor-half-major guitar passage that would seem almost noirish if it weren’t for the pacing of the section and the quaintness of the accompanying shaker, the song gradually accelerates with the introduction of a pumping bass drum and a distuned synth, before passing into a brief but dramatic instrumental section with jagged guitar chords and crash cymbals, then picking up again into a light-hearted pop rock part with melodic crooning from Nick, then off again leaving the synth playing off of the motifs of the previous section, finally building into the last section, a sort of peppier, less moody, less harmonic version of the previous part, drum kit in, Alden and Nick giving each other call and response vocals, subtle rhythm guitar in the back, then pausing before crashing back into the finale, dual guitars, drum-snare-drum-snare, bold synth chords, a sudden wave of percussion, every type under the sun, triangle, chimes, shakers, bells, a playful trumpet too, a raucous, triumphant end, then tailing off into a fumbling, deflated ending of clashing instruments and bum notes. All the while, Nick and Alden are performing a dialogue between an arrogant former child star, deluded by his belief that he’s retained his fame, and a former devotee, embittered by his rejection from the star’s fan club, a discussion that quickly becomes acrimonious and eventually devolves into a shouting match with both parties yelling “I hate you!” at each other.
The new and old cover art for Who Will Cut Our Hair When We’re Gone? side by side
You’d think the dizzying sonic variation of the album might be a barrier to cohesion, and it’s true that The Unicorns were likely allergic to writing two songs that sounded the same on this album, but on the contrary, the constant threads of Alden and Nick’s voices, the songs’ kooky musicality and even kookier lyrics, the general sense of playful, childish wonderment and curiosity and sheer fun, all tie up to make a neat package. The diversities and inconsistencies in mood and style only serve to make the album more unique and more eclectic. The lyrical slope towards death I mentioned earlier helps with cohesiveness too; the album opens with I Don’t Wanna Die and ends with Ready to Die. The former is a desperate plea to the Grim Reaper to hold off death sung by a delirious, paranoid narrator coupled with a horror B-movie harpsichord, the latter is an ode in search of death, with our narrator asking God not to spare him, wholly content with his experience on Earth (even dropping in a reference to Biggie Smalls in the process, which fits nicely with the song title). All this is accompanied by a almost noisy, mismatched symphony of squeaking, synthesised horns, beachside guitar, droning double bass, all climbing toward oblivion before dropping off abruptly on a mid-sentence cough and an unfinished anacrusis.
WWCOHWWG? brought a wave of publicity for the then little-known band, seeing them get highly positive reviews from Pitchfork, PopMatters, Stylus, Drowned in Sound, NME. It’s the main point from which they draw their fandom, the reason they got a namedrop in a How I Met Your Mother episode in 2010 (MTV did a cute interview on this point), the reason they have a fansite set up in 2005 with almost a million posts. Thanks to the band’s fermented reputation, their reissue has stirred up even more coverage from Consequence of Sound, Brooklyn Vegan, Pitchfork again (which I linked above), Spin, Stereogum, even Billboard, as well as prompting a few new reviews.
Pitchfork has had their finger on the band’s pulse longer and more closely than any other outlet, so it’s perhaps ironic that when The Unicorns: 2014 dropped, their review was scathing, opening with the line “The Unicorns have got to get their shit together” as well as some prophetic musing on rumours of the band’s inner tension (note: Impose have, very kindly, written a rebuttal in light of the new reissue).
Cover art for The Unicorns: 2014
The reviewer is right, though, to point out that this is a very different set of tracks to those on WWCOHWWG? The EP takes a much more guitar-driven, rock-oriented approach to The Unicorns’ usual formula. The kid-with-an-overactive-imagination creativity is still there - that much is obvious from the surreal, halloweenish cover art - but it’s wearing a leather jacket. The closest it comes to its predecessor might be the cutesy synth fiddling on the title track that was abundant on the album, but if anything the EP feels like a more polished throwback to their first record, Three Inches of Blood. Aside from the fact that the original The Unicorns: 2014 demo appeared on that album (as well as reappearing on the B-side to this EP), the cymbal-heavy pop punk of Emasculate the Masculine bears resemblance to the volcanic Do the Knife Fight from Three Inches, both sharing a frenetic energy and a lyrical penchant for graphic violence, though the energy in Emasculate the Masculine is much more controlled, having Do The Knife FIght’s chaotic screaming being replaced by Alden’s casual, almost sadistic mumbling and ragged, distorted guitars replaced with slick, cleanly produced ones. Think of it as Leatherface compared to Norman Bates. The updated title track is similarly slick, and perhaps loses some of the charm that was present in the garish, lo-fi synths and the slapdash production of the original, but the stormy, drum-heavy closing section makes up for that.
By now you know what happens next - the band breaks up. A Pitchfork article in 2005 with interviews from both lead songwriters gives some detail, citing internal disputes over how to structure the band from a management and a business perspective. And so they each went off and found their own individual creative projects. Nick has been more prolific over the past decade, and has the longest-running post-Unicorns band, Islands, but I think Alden’s Clues does the most justice to the Unicorn legacy. Teaming up with former Arcade Fire member Brendan Reed, Clues blended the aggression and playfulness that The Unicorns tended to keep separate, as well as adopting an ambitious grandiosity that the quainter Unicorns couldn’t have kept up. Both songwriters also had a number of side projects prior to The Unicorns’ first records, mostly obscure and unrecorded though the good people at the Secret Unicorns Forum have done a solid job of documenting some of it. Most notably, Alden’s previous project All Makes Parts and Collision, a sort of lonelier, folksier, predominantly acoustic precursor to The Unicorns, recorded early versions of Les Os, Emasculate the Masculine (then in the form of an instrumental entitled Soon), and Ebb Tide, Azure Sky.
The new tracks on the reissue include a delightful cover of Daniel Johnston’s Rocket Ship (original here), Let Me Sleep, a rework of an All Makes Parts and Collision song, and a yet to be heard live version of the unreleased Haunted House. I’m not sure if the reunion will hold, if there’ll be new material, if “side by side till 2025” will be a reality. Nick’s said it’s possible but no-one knows for sure. I hope this can be an opportunity for the Unicorns gospel to spread far and wide, because these guys really are a model for pop music at its very best. They twist the conventions and push the boundaries of the pop framework to breaking point while still sounding like they’ve just come out of a nursery school; their songwriting is smart without being pretentious, sweet without being sickening, and unrelentingly catchy; their instrumental arrangements and sheer creativity are unrivaled in their field. They’ve been an inspiration to me and to thousands of other fans as proof that you can start an incredibly goofy, incredibly silly band with a name as absurdly fanciful as The Unicorns and still write incredible songs.
Who Will Cut Our Hair When We’re Gone? is available digitally through iTunes and physically through the band’s online webstore. The Unicorns: 2014 is available physically and digitally through Amazon. Unicorns Are People Too is available for free download through the band’s former website. Three Inches of Blood is available for free download on the Secret Unicorns Forum.
P.S. I’ve changed my URL from ryanschreiberlosthispants.tumblr.com to thatsthedevil.tumblr.com. The old one’s funny but kind of embarrassing to say out loud, you know? it’s nice to have consistency as well; that URL had nothing to do with the blog’s heading.
