Red, red wine

Hands and Knees - Red Hot Minnow
pRIMORDIAL sOUNDS #5

Hands and Knees' Red Hot Minnow leaves me with the same feeling I get after watching my children spend 10 hours climbing on furniture, cartwheeling down stairs, doing somersaults on the ceiling, swan-diving off top bunks, and perfecting the skill of sprinting full throttle while screaming at top volume: I am simultaneously jealous of and fatigued by their inexhaustible energy.

Hands and Knees play fast and loose, like on "Cemetery" and "Cool," but even when they're not playing fast and loose, they still manage to exude a vitality that enters the room with you and lifts you up by the armpits and twirls you around. "Pinwheel" features this exuberant, sloppy melody; if it played for an eternity it wouldn't be long enough. "Gracie" has bleating trumpet and foot-stomping, hand-clapping rhythms. "Dreamt" is representative of Hand and Knees' rather uncomplicated approach to their craft: well-constructed songs done with a lo-fi recording approach.

I began to imagine the album's recording process and how much of a fecking blast it must have been to undertake. Like, a bottle of red wine was passed around and band members drank straight from the bottle, crimson spots dotting their chins. Except for that one individual (probably the bassist; bassists are pointy-headed piss faucets) who wanted to pour the red wine into a cup; he was ultimately rewarded for his civility by having the wine slosh all over his shirt, a mishap that was a source of much laughter to those around him. Then the bottle went empty and during a song when a particular band member wasn't needed (again, probably the bassist), that person was ordered to walk the nine blocks to the liquor store to fetch more red wine. Which they did, quite contently.