Dejeuner Sous L’Herbe, The Odes’ new release, is a crazy, underground and slightly hellish poetic collage by the revered Ted Milton of Blurt and co-conspirator Sam Britton (aka Isambard Khroustaliov). Milton, who has rubbed shoulders with none other than William S. Burroughs as well as Eric Clapton, pours no wave punk agitation into about 35 minutes and 43 tracks of dadaist linguistic abstraction. The release is presented as two halves: part one music, part two isolated voice.
Édouard Manet’s painting, Le Dejeuner Sur L’Herbe is flipped on its head on The Odes’ album cover artwork and its title ‘on the grass’ is replaced with ‘under the grass’, moving thematically into the underworld. However, the confrontational gaze of the original is retained. The punk ethic of meeting the viewer un-demure and naked, found in the 1863 image, suggests a changing social order. It challenges hierarchy. Milton’s interest in disruption of social class collages high art with punk poetic intervention.
The titular track has a devilish growl, accompanied by drums that start to wheeze out like a haunted steam train under the jazz screech of Milton’s saxophone. In moments the distorted lyrics take language into the purely musical. “Une fois attablé on est dans la merde” (‘Once we sit down to eat, we’re really in the shit’), the final lyric of this song, is clear and ominous, perhaps poking fun at the bourgeois scene presented in Dejeuner Sur L’Herbe. A happy distance from conformity, The Odes reject such comforts. Once you assimilate, you’ve lost.
This is a genre-defiant album that melds electronics with sing-talk lyrics and drums of a punk ilk. ‘Lines of Fire’ is war-like and Dadaist. In one of many references to order (or dis-order) and the military on the album, an Ubu Roi-inspired commander character comes into the foreground. The Odes’ sound poems take the cut and paste techniques of artists like Hannah Höch and Kurt Schwitters who recontextualise the familiar and disturb the established order. ‘Lines Of Fire’ montages a deep, anvil-esque drum and the command-slash-threat “on your knees”. The Odes have shown whose side they’re on: the rebels. Their album contributes an artistic image of the monstrous reality of the boss.
