As I listened to my acquisition (the subject of today's post) that night, the concept for a new recurring feature germinated in my mind. This CD represented a fertile field of music criticism--the Embarrassing Album. You know what I mean--a band releases a record that, for whatever reason, they ought to be ashamed of. This could be due to bad production, abysmal songwriting, inappropriate genre/style shifts, lineup changes, a combination of these or other factors, etc. Whatever it is, these albums have the ability to put even a band's most fervent fans in a torches-and-pitchforks mood. Very often the band itself will express dismay with the finished product; however, they'll just as often stubbornly brush off criticism and soldier on with the new sound. This, to put it mildly, rarely ends well.
This isn't the case with today's album. Mercifully. Submitted for your (dis)approval: Ministry's With Sympathy.
Even if you're not a fan, you've probably heard Ministry on a movie soundtrack at some point. Certainly they're one of the more distinctive bands out there; their brand of pounding industrial music combined with Al Jourgensen's heroin-soaked, strangled-loudspeaker vocals is pretty much unmistakable. Just hearing a few seconds will make you think "Huh. Is that Ministry?"
This...is not the case on With Sympathy.
Nothing, nothing on this debut album correlates with the later band. Seriously. Don't believe me? Look, I'll show you. Here's a more typical Ministry song:
And here's a song from With Sympathy:
Now, I realize you probably have questions. Such as, say, "I don't understand--is Al Jourgensen behind this guy?" or "So was he doing more or less heroin back then?" or, most likely, "Are you absolutely sure this is the same Ministry?"
This last is quite relevant; Stickly knows bands names get repeated often enough (there've been, like, three Nirvanas. Seriously). But yes, I'm sure in this case. Not only is this that Ministry, it's that Ministry's debut album, their first and last for Arista Records. Not what I'd call an auspicious beginning, and Jourgensen agrees--he's referred to With Sympathy as "an abortion of an album", further elaborating:
"I consider it worse than that because it's not my album...I was the original Milli Vanilli, man. I'm serious. They (Arista) wrote the songs, they wrote the lyrics, they appointed producers, they appointed musicians. I even had management tell me what I could or couldn't dress like. It was like going to prison...I was young and stupid. I sold out before I even started. When you're living in a burned out squat where it snows through your roof into your living room, and you have extension cords a block long for space heaters, you're not going to say no to someone offering you 150 grand...It was really fucked up. I don't think I have a pretty face (on this, Jourgensen and I are in perfect agreement--C.), but someone up there apparently did. Either that, or they were happy to find a fucked up idiot that would say yes to everything they said..."(Decibel Magazine interview, Nov. 2007)
And this is coming from a guy who thought a "Lay Lady Lay" cover would be a good idea.
You may be pondering another question. "Now, C., is With Sympathy really THAT bad? Sure, it's...unusual, but Jourgensen's nothing if not experimental. For fuck's sake, he collaborated with Ian MacKaye of all people and I'm pretty sure he's had more heroin than blood in his veins for most of his career. And that song you posted isn't completely horrible; how bad can the rest of the album be?"
Is that an awful lot of words to put in your collective mouth? Sorry. But to answer your hypothetical query: pretty damn bad, actually.
I'll start with one thing which stands out in the above song--Jourgensen's singing voice. "Hey," you might be thinking (and this is the last hypothetical question/comment, swearsies) "I didn't know that guy was British!" Well...no. He's not. That's right, Al Jourgensen (or "Alain" Jourgensen, according to the liner credits) fakes a British accent for the entire album. That's not even the funny part. The funny part is, he does a great job of faking a British accent--he pulls it off all flawless-like. It's literally the only thing With Sympathy pulls off consistently well. If you didn't know the band's later reputation (and remember, this is a debut album), you'd never suspect Jourgensen wasn't British. That's old Al for you--even when he's so baked he literally can't remember recording entire albums (and presumably greenlighting retch-worthy covers for said albums) you can't fault his work ethic.
The same way With Sympathy does the phony-baloney accent consistently well, one thing is done consistently badly--the production. This becomes apparent from the first moments of the opening song, "Effigy (I'm Not An)". The whole album sounds that weak and, I don't know, farty. It sounds like one of those TV shows or commercials set in the 80s whose producers didn't feel like springing for song rights, so they just strung together a few vagely new-wavey sounding beeps and boops and called it a club scene. Or, if you prefer, like the soundtrack to pretty much any porno movie.
The composition's about as inspired as the production--even if you hate new wave (and I don't, believe it or not--at least, not always) the instrumentation's so generic you have a hard time working up much loathing for it. With Sympathy sounds every inch the cash-in it is--a bland, factory-stamped also-ran meant to wring a few more pennies out of this new-fangled music all the kids are talking about these days (you know, assuming "these days" is 1983).
No, it's in the lyrics where the veils of mediocrity fall from With Sympathy to let the true crap shine through. Most of them reminded me of nursery rhymes more than anything else--see above video ("the corridor, yes, the corridor"? Lolwut?). Though you at least have to give "What He Say" credit for including the word "Swaziland". That, and being the album's worst/funniest song (which I know is saying a hell of a lot), thanks to its faux-mariachi/world music pretensions.
The sad part of all this--the truly, desperately sad part--is, someone out there, some dreary distasteful shell of what I only loosely deem a human being to be sure, having taken the band's future discography into account, still thinks this is the best Ministry album. It might even be you.
But perhaps I'm being too harsh. Sure, With Sympathy is bad, but it falls very much on the "so bad it's good" side of the scale. Certainly it's nothing a band like Ministry wants on its discography (especially as a debut), but in the end it's mostly inoffensive and forgettable.
It's certainly not as bad as some of the other albums I have in mind...
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