Amor and Language

LP cover

CD cover

Track listing

No.	Title	Length
1.	"Hard on Through the Summer"	2:29
2.	"The Ballad of Younis and Sofia"	4:33
3.	"Luster"	2:21
4.	"Ai"	2:43
5.	"T (I, II)"	5:48
6.	"A-A-Allegories"	2:03
7.	"The Wind"	3:14
8.	"Stil de grain brun"	2:09
9.	"The Letter"	3:23

Background

Recorded in Chicago and Los Angeles

"it's sonics alarmed the pressing plant enough to wonder if there were imperfections in the master"

• 
  Poster

Personnel

Musicians

David Grubbs, George Hurley, John McEntire, Albert Oehlen, Jim O'Rourke, Stephen Prina, Mayo Thompson, Tom Watson

Artists, etc

Consuelo & Meme, Tricia Donnelly, John Elder, Margo Leavin, Steve Linn, Sharon Lockhart, Franz Schnaas, Alex Slade, Steven Wong

Cover art

The cover photo is by Christopher Williams. The model is Rachel Williams. On the opposite side of the CD booklet, she is shown holding a copy of Gorki & Co. / 33 Songs.

Reviews

Chicago Tribune

August 3, 1995

David Rothschild

There's nothing new about using sex to sell products, but there's something a tad ironic about the sight of supermodel Rachel Williams, semi-nude--on the back cover of The Red Krayola's new "Amor and Language" CD on Chicago's scrappy, independent Drag City label.

After wondering how Drag City pulled it off, on second and third glance, you discover that Williams is made to look as unglamorous and unsexy as possible, which clearly takes some doing. And you realize it's all a put-on.

At a party in Los Angeles earlier this year, The Red Krayola's Mayo Thompson was introduced to the model by a photographer friend, Christopher Williams (no relation). The photo shoot took place soon thereafter.

Had Thompson and the photographer been looking to sell more CDs, draping Williams like a corpse over what appears to be a garden weeding bench, dressed in army surplus pants and matching brassiere, definitely would not have been the ticket. So why waste a beautiful woman's time making her look like a G.I. Joanne blow-up doll?

"The whole thing is just completely ironic," says Drag City's Rian Murphy. "I would love to hear someone say--just because I'd know that I had a sucker then--that we were making some sort of sexist pay-off. It's got nothing to do with what it would seem at all."

Drag City is known for its deadpan, subversive leanings, and in the furthest realms of underground rock, it's often hard to tell what's intended to be funny and who the joke is on--or if all of mainstream culture is one long, running gag.

"It's warts and all on that particular spread," says Murphy.

"It's definitely a comment on the objectification of art and turning one thing into something else for profit. "

The musical charms of "Amor and Language"--sort of a cross between the Lovin' Spoonful and the Discovery Channel--will probably be lost on those who buy it for the faux cheesecake on the back cover. But consciousness-raising was never a big business--and isn't that ironic.

CMJ New Music Monthly

September 1995

Franklin Bruno

Mayo Thompson has got to be some kind of center of gravity for the off-center. Nobody else makes records with supermodel Rachel Williams as cover star, L.A. art dealer Margo Leavin in the credits, and members of Gastr del Sol, Overpass, Tortoise, and the faculty of Pasadena Art Center (not to mention German painter Albert Oehlen) on the grooves. So what does this cynosure of the cerebral wings of several disciplines sound like after 20-plus years of koloring outside the lines? An off-the-cuff art-rocker, concerned more with the play of ideas than their polished presentation. Most of this EP was recorded bass-ackwards, with a lined-in, untreated guitar and vocal (you can hear Mayo breathing off-mic fairly often) being laid down before such niceties as, say, a rhythm section. "AI" (Artificial Intelligence?) features not one, but two such after-the-fact drum tracks, with George Hurley and John McEntire playing separate parts (presumably without reference to each other) in each channel, operating independently in the manner of hemispheres of a divided brain. "T (I, II)" uses experimental results from cognitive sciences as the governing metaphor of a love lyric: "We were turning you over in our minds/at about 10 rpm.../a mental picture, a mental picture of you." And it even has a hook! But for everyone one of Thompson's connections the listener does "get," there's probably five s/he's missing. Why, for example, does "The Wind" suddenly quote "Moonlight Becomes You"? On this nine-song, 25-minute EP, the answers are less the point than the opertunity to observe a venturesome mind and his talented entourage.

Staten Island Advance

October 15, 1995

The Trouser Press guide to '90s rock

1997

Nine more new songs can be found on the brief, wispy and unambitious Amor and Language, the work of numerous musicians, although the undifferentiated list of participants includes sexy cover model Rachel Williams. Unlike the cagey complexities of The Red Krayola (and despite the admonition to "play extremely loud"), "The Ballad of Younis and Sofia" and "Luster" — which use only skeletal bits of guitar and organ for accompaniment — are typical. Actually, the mild-mannered approach is appealing and accessible, giving Thompson's penchant for eccentric lyrical terrain a clear field. Adding to the bizarre historical recitation of "A-A-Allegories" and the frozen waste matter falling from the sky in "Stil de Grain Brun," the detailed geometric romance of "T(I,II)" is intriguing enough, doubling the pleasure as the sonic doodles suddenly give way to a normal-sounding (with squiggly synth) rock band instrumental. Some people try to sing the periodic table of the elements and get called asshole; this never happened to Mayo Thompson.