The Blow’s MySpace bio begins with the delightfully syrupy, “[h]old a piece of pop music in your hand. How heavy is it? If you threw it, could you break the window of a passing car? Could you break a tooth?” I don’t know the answers to any of those questions. I have never assumed that pop music was all that heavy. It has never occurred to me to try throwing pop music at a passing car. I do know that car windows are sort of difficult to break, so it would take a lot of pop music, maybe the Beatles’ Anthology. Once upon a time I almost got my tooth broke once on my way to a pop music concert. But, it wasn’t so much the pop music as much as the crack addict’s fist at that bus stop that did it. These are the sorts of absurd questions this record will have you asking. Some others might include:
Q. (Raised by “Pile of Gold.”) Is this Peaches?
A. Maybe…maybe not…it is about girls sitting on piles of gold and dudes…ah, no it isn’t, it is about fair trade and “heavy social taxes” acting as an “incentive for dudes not to receive imports from other dudes.” Ok, this might be Peaches after all.
Q. (Raised by “Parentheses.”) What would make someone cry in the deli aisle?
A. Who knows? But those may be the single greatest lyrics I have ever heard (“If something in the deli aisle makes you cry you know I will put my are around you and I’ll walk you outside, through the sliding doors, why would I mind?”).
Q. (Raised by “The Long List of Girls.”) Did she just say “watch where you point with that tube of love”? Are you sure this is not Peaches?
A. For the last time, I am sure! Peaches is raunchy pornographic filth (in a good way), The Blow are breezy little catchy drum machine numbers with sweet innocent and vocals singing poppy little electro numbers about tubes of love, comforting your lover after they start crying in the deli aisle, the brilliance of indoor plumbing (“Babay (Eat a Critter, Feel its Wrath)”) and other ridiculously hilariously absurdly frivolously genius things that make this record much more approachable than Peaches.
Peaches is that cougar at the bar that would eat you whole and spit out your kidney stones, while The Blow is that cute little number dancing like she doesn’t give a shit to beats pumped out by her androgynous friend’s MacBook in somebody’s bedroom wearing sneakers designed by a colour blind fashion school drop-out. You talk to her because her spunk, dance moves, and gaudy sneakers suck you in. Her vivaciousness is like some sort of tractor beam. When you do talk to her she is completely disarming and enchanting. She laughs at your jokes, a lot, and makes many of her own, all hilarious. She makes you feel completely at ease, while you bop your head to her friend’s MacBook beats. She might say nothing of any substance but she says it in such away that fair trade becomes a delightful exchange, or lack thereof, between a couple of dudes and not a heavy-handed crisis of conscience; a penis becomes a “tube of love,” dudes are dudes. And as you watch her dance hope that one-day she will “love the shit out of you” too (“The Long List of Girls”).
Call me a lightweight (it’s true), but I am scared half-to-death by the cougar in the pink leather suit with the camel toe singing about her “skittle.” But, I am completely enamoured with the spunky girl and her androgynous friend making fun pop songs to bop to so that you feel saucy, alive, and happy (what else are pop songs for than this?); rather than leaving you feeling like you need to find a priest for confession halfway through the first track.There are any number of other questions this album raised, but you will need to check it out for yourself to find out what they are. In conclusion, and to try and salvage any last shred of music critic dignity I may have once (if ever) possessed, The Blow’s Paper Television is a fantastically fun electro pop record. It didn’t change my life. It didn’t make me write a letter to my father to tell him that I love him even though I didn’t follow him into dentistry. It didn’t make me take up quill and parchment and compose sonnets of love and longing or death and despair. It made me go to the fridge and get some ice cream and bop my head while looking at funny pictures on the Internet. And one day, when I make friends, I will play it for them and maybe one of them will be a girl with gaudy shoes and a lot of spunk and she will dance to The Blow as I play them on my MacBook in my bedroom, and she will “love the shit out of” them and me, and then when the record is over and our ice cream is gone we will go to the new Ninja Turtles movie just for kicks and make out in the front row.
