Ted Leo and the Pharmacists - The Stick

You could get a lot of mileage out of Ted Leo's songs at face value. The guy's got hooks, riffs, and charisma to spare. But to overlook the social awareness and defiant spirit bubbling under the surface would miss what makes him one of the most vital songsmiths going. "The Stick," from he and the Pharmacists' new album The Brutalist Bricks, is the latest in a growing tradition of sub-2:00 blasts of righteous vitriol which stand as spiky landmarks rather than noisy interludes (cf. "Annunciation Day/Born On Christmas Day" from Living with the Living).

Verse one has Leo venting frustration, first in a fairly run-of-the-mill way about politics and affairs in general, then with the stinging acknowledgment that the underexposed cruelties of the world have been watered down to caricatures by people who contrive to invoke them. In the scheme of the song though, this is just an observation; the upshot so far is simply that shit sucks. So relief is sought in the second verse, which opens with a great example of Leo's gift for imagery. But an idyllic drive can't completely tune out the lingering dread of the world's problems. Even the Old North Road itself is a reminder of oppression; it was built by the Romans as they conquered England from proto-London northward.

The song wraps up with an angry affirmation of authority's use of reward-or-punishment theory, "the carrot or the stick." Or, more appropriately, "the stick if not the carrot." The fasces are another reference to Roman power, a multivalent allegory for a delicate administrative integration of unity, restraint, and force. Twelve rods bound around an ax, the stick of the title is still used extensively in the symbology of governmental and other bodies.

Of course, this would all be another boring day in an intro-level Classics course if the music didn't shred. The opening salvo of driving beat over chugging chords is reminiscent of Wire's "1 2 X U," followed by a brief silence before Leo spits his staccato screed over the same. A softer but still intense and uneasy bridge leads to the final verse, where we get one last burst of discord on the penultimate line before the song's sudden halt. The final syllable of "fasces" hangs over the silence, echoing the specter of tyranny present throughout.



Anxious mofo, my twin my friend
Election time again, I wish that I was dead
Some conversation, if you're well read
To calm the storm of shit that's raging in my head
While languishing in basements: 10 million corpses lashed to beds
Atrophied to archetypes by all the able artists overhead

Mixed light of evening, sky of the sea
You take the Old North Road 'cause that's where you feel free
Your hidden backroads, your hidden dreams
A hidden cigarette that actually helps you breathe
Play an ancient mixtape, attempt a break from the routine
But dark on the horizon, form that's never fully come to being

Still need a reason for your unease
You think the government it wants you on your knees
But I'll tell you something, and here it is:
They want you driving to the supermarket, buying milk and cheese
Generating taxes to fuel their corn subsidies
You're either nibbling at the carrot, or you get beat with the fasces