His words are poetically brilliant, funny, sad, they have resonance, speak to a generation, and are often playfully surreal in their use of peculiar language and fragmentation. He has a nerdy voice and his music, up to this album, was peculiar and unique. With Summary, he set out to make something closer to pop music and he's succeeded. While he's still not singing per se, the music is more conventionally pretty and features more of melodic and harmonic instrumentation, whereas before maybe the music treated all instruments more as percussion – perhaps an understanding result of Fowler's free jazz percussion studies in college.
The new "pretty" pop sound of Summary works well against these texts which are more often serious in nature. "Complete Consumption of Us Both" is an intimate letter to a lost friend or lover, and "Untitled" is a letter to a friend in the throes of self-destruction. Summary is not all darkness, though, there are lighthearted songs like "The Song is the Single" which continues with the sort of meta-narrative that Fowler has explored in the past, where the lyrics comment on the song you're listening to, and on the process of music or art-making in general, and the business and scene and lives of artists and musicians in an interesting, critical candid way. The title track, "Summary" has a similar effect, commenting about the world of text art and art galleries and practices in general by talking about his own experience and passion for communication.
A beautiful, brilliant record, for those not turned off by the idea of a very chatty guy with a nerdy voice spieling dizzying and hyperpersonal-to-the-point-of-extremely-awkward meta-narratives such as this one from "Summary", where Fowler pre-empts the critics by perfectly describing his approach: "I'll talk about everything, I'll talk about every inch of this thing, this record, every square fucking inch. I'll fully talk this thing into the ground and I will say every word so fucked up."
- First
- the song is the single
- Summary
- untitled
- half of two times two (newer version)
- Was I? Are You?
- Piled On Piles On Head
- context ender
