Review Summary: throw your hands up because property is robbery, keep your head up because it doesn't have to be
In my canon, Pat the Bunny found all of his instruments in an abandoned, dilapidated storage unit somewhere along with his vocal chords. I say this with all the love in my heart. Moreover, When
Burn the Earth! Leave it Behind! was being written and recorded, he lived in an apartment that he dreaded coming home to; all broken windows, needles and cigarette ash blanketing the floor. This imaginary world I’ve constructed is all to better understand the places that this record comes from, or at least how it arrived as such a barbed and caustic piece of music. Poor guy, I hope he’s less disillusioned now.
*Gruff film trailer voice*
IN A WORLD WHERE POLITICIANS ARE JOKES AND COMEDIANS FACILITATE DIALOGUE AND CRITICAL THINKING REGARDING THE STATE OF BUREAUCRACY, ONE MAN FIGHTS TO ESTABLISH A NEW ADMINISTRATION BASED ON DIY ETHICS, ACOUSTIC GUITARS AND FUCK ALL ELSE.
Burn the Earth! is the type of noise that neighbours complain about and jaded twenty-somethings revel in. Either event will end in a racket, and it feels like that’s what Pat the Anarch-… Pat the Bunny wants. I think Pat fancies every political system a reworking of totalitarianism because of how much he values his own autonomy, but also because he knows first-hand how painful losing that freedom can actually be.
Burn the Earth! and records like
Love Songs… see our favourite iconoclast destroying his own sovereignty with whatever drug he can get his hands on and then hating himself enough to try and get better. The world, he thinks, is exactly the same. Might as well kill two idiot birds with one stone.
His efforts to do so are as uplifting as they are unruly. In F
uck Every Cop, the rallying cry:
“you are not alone” seems, in that moment, the perfect maxim to spray on every train and overpass to ever deface your city. The end of
My Idea of Fun is the most selfless, unifying, optimistic lyrical passage to ever be shouted in basements across the country, and
“I do my own dishes now/I’ll do my own dishes then” is the most relatable metaphor for autocracy I’ve ever heard (and I’ve heard at least 2, probably). Also, I think that using the odd harmonica, electric guitar and cello is the best way to evoke a sense of tight-knit community, and establishing this notion makes the idea of self-governance seem both more impassioned and genuinely viable.
Past the bank that’s never been robbed, the courthouse, the record store that has no Bikini Kill records in stock, and past the gaol on the outskirts of town that overflows with people that are suicidal yet fundamentally undeserving of their cage, there is a share-house. Here, there’s a gathering of disenchanted kids eroding their lungs singing Pat the Bunny songs. There’s a quote inscribed across the wall in a large, messy scrawl. It reads:
“Urine speaks louder than words, on a politician, or on a prison warden.” – Ancient American Proverb
