New Music from Timecard
by
sigmeister3
Timecard, an amalgam of musical tastes, is anything but on vacation in their premier release of the same name. Partaking of some of that same childish glee with which we all greet well-earned holidays, Vacation refuses to take itself too seriously. Like its namesake, Vacation exults in the lulls and interludes of the day, the public spaces, sleepy evenings and brunches that make time away from the everyday so precious.
The brainchild of musician Matt Medeiros, Timecard offers a constantly mutating stable of performers centered around Medeiros' tastes and talents. This initial public offering has serious fun with everyman's favorite time of year. The variety of performers and supporters enrich the texture of the work as a whole while giving depth individual pieces.
In the "Vacation Theme", although starting with the paradoxically “balmy [spring] night in New England,” the siren song of the celestial chorus singing the refrain “Let’s go on Vacation, so many places to see,” beckons to us all with the promise of lazy nights and a change of scene. In common with all vacations, "Vacation Theme" offers a broad menu of possibilities: “So many good ideas, I couldn’t wait to hit the road/ You said we could go to the city and check out a couple museums/ or we could do a roadtrip and stay in cheap motels.” Timecard in its theme offers up to us all the cornucopia of possibilities for “bakin and relaxin” and the cool relaxed beat of Vacation Theme is replete with laid back, holiday style “chillin”.
"This Is Central Park", the second cut of this dawdling take on quietude, starts as gently as the sun warming the song's inspiration, the Park itself. The quiet ethereal opening segues into a more frenetic pace that parallels the city's daily investiture of Central Park with life. While the beat picks up with the pulse of the city's recreation, Timecard's repeated declaration of the Park bespeaks a detached and distanced appreciation of the park's enormity and possibilities. The Park is both planned and orderly yet very much not of the city. “All the roads out here, are separate from paths/ Intentional and designed to keep things orderly.” In fact, the city crowds the park and can still intrude: “To the south and east high rises block the sun/ This is Central Park.” And again, “In the north are high rises, they’re sitting on the trees/ to the south are meadows, they used to mow with sheep.” Nonetheless, like so many sites we should visit on our vacation, we are compelled to go there: “It’s a place I’m crossing off my list.” Like the Park itself, "This Is Central Park" offers complexities of viewpoints and rhythm that provide something for every vacationer.
Ever wake up late on vacation and famished? Then "Gonna Go Eat" will bring back memories, though the mishap with scrapple may put you off your feed for a while. As whimsical as any piece in this collection, "Gonna Go Eat" considers the many gastronomic options available at a vacation pace--French toast, crepes, hash browns, home fries, soy cream, coffee, and the dangerous and potentially lethal scrapple. The anonymous speakers trade an undercurrent of dialogue in British accents while the song takes us from awakening through breakfast planning, to meal seating, plain milk, to indignation at the search for soy cream sprinkled with the slowly dawning realization that an elderly female diner has choked on her scrapple and requires rescue. Not to worry though, the diner’s distress like lighthearted vacation itself should not be taken seriously. Not only do the arriving paramedics rescue the scrapple queen from her choking but also they can supply the much sought after soy cream. Not only all in a day’s work and play, but all to a persistent pounding beat pushing through vacation and brunch.
Amusement parks anchor another corner of vacations, and Timecard carries on the tradition with “Souvenir,” also nodding to The all-American amusement park: Disneyworld. The souvenir in question, “It’s a pair of black felt Mickey Mouse ears/ with my name stitched in gold letters,” finds its echo in the voices of the song, a falsetto high-flying sound that mimics the mouse of fame. That mimicry is made more specific in the dialogue even higher in pitch of “Hi kids,” as if Mickey deigns to speak to our adult vacationers. Souvenirs are the stuff of vacation—sometimes a smoothed stone from the streambed where we swam, sometimes pictures before famous sites, sometimes artwork—but most often here in America some ashtray, hat, or mouse ears bearing the names of where we have been. In the case of Vacation’s “Souvenir,” we are left with both the impression of a place visited as embodied by the object and the fact that someone gave this token--perhaps as a symbol of intimacy--but not too much as “it was kind of romantic, in a campy sort of way.” And again, the promise of intimacy held at a distance holds some humor as in any vacation, any appeal to the impermanence of a week apart, “I’m looking at a picture. We took it on Space Mountain/ You purposely looked bored. You were always playing it cool.” Yet as the refrain of the song emphasizes, how seriously could you take something . . . “you could find in a place like Burbank, California. Burbank, California.”
Last days of vacation can be mournful wistful times, the end of the vacation compounded by the end of other things. Timecard's “Last Song” touches on these bases and creates some of its own. “Today’s the last day of our vacation,” Timecard tells us, and perhaps longing is appropriate, but “I don’t want you to cry or think that it’s an end/We will go on.” The slow lazy beat of this song syncs with the singer’s voice to promote his closing thought not only to never regret the vacation but also, “I can still relax,without hotel rooms/And I’ll take care, to always relax/ In my mind, I’m on vacation all the time.” Who would have thought a vacation held a permanent lesson for us?
