Review Summary: Co-written with Bitchfork. This is another CTtS review, only it's about Millionaires.
If you think about it, Millionaires' Rated X-Mas is a composition built off several metaphors, the foremost being the "Non-Objective Portrait of Karma," where crescendoing ambience seems to embody the daddy issues of three slightly overweight harpies, and their obsessive need to satisfy an older man (with a sexual dominance). The whole song is an allegorical representation of the theoretical undercurrents concerning Aristotle’s unmoved mover and modern day physics.
The story we are told concerns a sweet, innocent girl awaiting the arrival of St. Nicholas. For Christmas this year, our classy heroin would like something to satisfy the new, confusing sensations she has been growing into. Not much irony to be found here: Santa Claus represents daddy, and the mutiny he causes within her loins.
In the first verse a foreshadowing occurs: “I’ve been bad all year, that’s what mommy told me.” The tried relationship between mother and daughter indicates an overthrow (perhaps another way to say "actions speak louder than words"). This introduction (which is, unsurprisingly, about death) seems to present the birth of an idea, before moving on into a chaotic display of hilariously charismatic bleepo.
It becomes quite clear that, in terms of this record's extremely complex thematic foundations, lyrics are unusually important. Regarding, the imagery within the lyrics (“skeet like snow”), while many could (and do) argue that this provides adequate incorporation of political and theistic philosophy, to this reviewer it comes across as sloppy pretense. Why Santa? He’s in pretty bad shape, and he is clearly married to his work.
Any sort of simplicity is thrown out the window, but perhaps this is the point. The Millionaires use this allegorical setting to flip the modern American family structure on its head. Santa is married? Tough SH*T, somebody should have taught Mrs. Clause to take a dick like a real woman. This whole thing is her fault.
You can tell when the band is preaching politics and contemplating religion. “Santa slap me on the wrist, put me on your naughty list. All the boys are screaming you’re a Hoe! Hoe! Hoe!” They preach the infamous cliché: we are abandoned by daddy, "perfectly imperfect," as perfection is an abstraction by its natural animation, achievable by sexual intercourse with strange, overweight men.
The story behind the album is equally generic, but it's got potential to shine as a grand, layered tale, following the story of an unnamed young woman’s fulfillment of a lifelong fantasy. When you think about it, it’s a theistic tale of feminist grace. After she convinces Santa she’s for real, she involves Rudolph (obviously a metaphor for Muslims) in the sexual cocktail. The feminine libido is clearly what drives the world to turn.
Dual-vocal (and at parts tri-vocal) styling brings a much more self-important tone to the song’s political subtexts. Perhaps the Millionaires are just blind as to how emotion and the sound of rapidly flapping, sweaty flesh should mix? The result is depressingly pedestrian. Indeed, they may be, for with each unrighteous claim comes a more questions about their origins. In their own climactic apex, they are showered with “snow,” seemingly of questionable origin. Is it the fat man’s elevated egotism that they need for some sort of fleeting ecstasy, or rather the more rewarding and enduring peace on earth (in the form of reindeer spunk)? The answers just may be at the center of the storm.
