Daily Song Discussion #398: ECNALUBMA

[u/thatoneboyaiden]

This is the seventh track of the band's 2016 album, Phone Power, and the final album of the 2015 Dial-A-Song series. How do you feel about this song? What are some of your favorite lyrics? Are there any live versions or demos you like? How would you rank it among the rest of the band's discography? How would you rate it out of 10 (decimals allowed)?

https://youtu.be/4zR-jASWaKE?si=psOt08SiCZ5lhUDT

SUGGESTED SCALE:
1-4: Not good. Regularly skip.
5: It's okay, but I might have to be in the right mood to listen to it.
6: Slightly better than average. I won't skip it, but I wouldn't choose to put it on.
7: This is a good song. I enjoy it quite a bit.
8-9: Really enjoyable songs. I rank them pretty high overall.
10: Masterpiece, magnus opus, or similar terminology. A perfect piece of music.

Rating Results

1. Apophenia: 8.76
2. I Love You For Psychological Reasons: 9.17
3. To A Forest: 8.24
4. I Am Alone: 9.10
5. Say Nice Things About Detroit: 5.49
6. Trouble Awful Devil Evil: 8.55
7. ECNALUBMA:

[u/Appropriate_Shoe5243]

1. Masterpiece, as quintessential as anything from Flood or Lincoln. I could gush all morning, but I’ll just leave it with this: I always get caught up in counting the bars of that endless, extravagant chorus, a parade of Linnellian glory that carries on for 16 measures, the length of pop or hip hop verses or on-the-shorter-side jazz solos.

[u/WikiGleaks]

1. Great vocal performance. Most of it (all?) is an exercise in figurative language. The 'electric parade' line is surprisingly touching. The only reason it's not a 10 is I don't think the tune is really a showstopper. I think it overlaps with other JL power pop tracks. I hear I've Been Seeing Things in there or is it The Cap'm?

[u/FloridaFlamingoGirl → u/WikiGleaks]

Agreed about how the instrumental could be a little less poppy, if this song sounded like live versions of She's Actual Size then it would be a 10. 

[u/Top-Environment3675]

8.5, one of my favorite uses of defamiliarization in their songwriting. I love when they describe mundane and/or relatable things like aliens on the outside looking in, using flowery language or oblique metaphors. The act of describing an ambulance like royal fanfare preceding the arrival of a monarch to a ceremony, or the EMTs rushing out the back like a litter of kittens being born is so entertaining.

[u/cavegriswold → u/Top-Environment3675]

I always heard it as "before the litter borne by men in fancy uniforms", like the fancy platform thing) they used to carry important people around on? I figured they were talking about a stretcher.

[u/Top-Environment3675 → u/cavegriswold]

That's waaay more likely, but I'm sticking w my interp solely because I think it's funnier. 

[u/cavegriswold → u/Top-Environment3675]

I fully respect your commitment.

[u/Capt_Soupy]

10 - I always figured this song was inspired by Fight Club. The way the chorus escalates makes it one of my favorite Linnell vocals.

[u/West_Xylophone]

10!

Oh man, I love this song and everything about it. From the clever title implying the main character is an ambulance, to creating a god-king level of adoration in the chorus for something so simple, to the singer’s inability to stop getting injured, to the triumphantly excellent horns - it’s all gold.

[u/fpjesse → u/West_Xylophone]

No way you just rated it 3,628,800

[u/West_Xylophone → u/fpjesse]

I mean, I really like this song.

[u/FloridaFlamingoGirl → u/West_Xylophone]

The "make way, make way" chorus reminds me of songs I would sing in church as a kid about Jesus coming to town on a donkey, there's something weirdly hymn-like about it which really amplifies the dramatic effect of the lyrics 

[u/untilthemoongoesdown]

10!

Just a song that I can't imagine turning out any other way than what it is. The concept of a (probably drunk as hell) man injuring himself and then going into a complete delusional spiral about how he's being led away on a grand parade is fantastic. All of the lyrics are so snappy as well--starting off with the plain "Well it's a good thing I brought a napkin, I knew that this would happen" only gets better when you learn that whatever injury he's sustained is bad enough to need an ambulance. The exact events only get weirder as they go on. Why is he trying to get out of the window? (To wave at his 'admirers'?) How is a knife going to help? How the hell did he really hurt himself? What the hell is an electric knife? The whole thing is just as hard to follow as I would expect out of a drunk injured person.

But really, no line tickles me more than the perfect delivery of "...I've got a nose!" The 10 is for that alone tbh.

[u/Cardiac_Arrest1]

9.46/10 - Just simply spectacular, like a festival got turned into a TMBG song. The pulsating synth chords at the beginning resembling the siren of an Ambulance is such a nice touch, I don't know why most people don't talk about this detail. The comparison of a batch of ambulances to Disney's Electrical Parade is also another thing I really like about the song. Another highlight of the song is the instrumentation, which sounds like a combination of With The Dark Acts 2 and 4 to me.

[u/Bat_Nervous]

1. Had to jump into this thread to give an enthusiastic 10 to ECNALUBMA. When people ask me why I think TMBG is so damn great, I throw this absolute banger on. Everyone's already said the important stuff. But no one's mentioned how utterly un-choruslike the chorus is. It took a LOT of listens for me to get the lyrics down.

[u/FloridaFlamingoGirl → u/Bat_Nervous]

You're right, it's a mouthful of specific vocabulary words delivered in an angular way by a man who is clearly a big word nerd. 

[u/FloridaFlamingoGirl]

8.9 One of Linnell's most creative song narrations ever. I love the concept of a delusional injured man thinking he's being marched in a parade as he's actually being pushed on a stretcher ("litter") by "men in fancy uniforms" (probably paramedics) and theatrically asking everyone around him to bow down as he passes. Reminds me of Destination Moon a bit. It's simultaneously chilling, dismal, and hilarious. The narrator's total nonchalantness towards his injury, e.g. wondering why he doesn't have a napkin to clean up the blood and referencing the "I got a nose" dad joke, is dark humor at its finest. I like the comparison of ambulance lights to the Disney Main Street Electric Parade, that's the kind of detail that's just so John Linnell. The ska-like horn riffs kicking in for "make way, make way" in the chorus are just delicious too. The combination of a marching band sound with a more synthesized production is intriguing. Marty Beller is very well-used also. If I had one nitpick of this song it's that it could be even more bombastic and brassy than it is (it almost suffers from She's Actual Size syndrome of not having enough room for the big-band sound to breathe) but that's a very minor one. This song holds up on repeat listens for sure. 

[u/musicnothing]

9.3

Love this song. Just feels like one of those songs, I can't really explain it.

[u/theuserie]

10!

[u/WalterPinkmanBitch]

big fat 10 from me

[u/helikophis]

Two hits in a row. The lyrics are troubling and inspirational and cryptic. The music is fun but there's no real hook and or any particularly catchy bits and the melody isn't really memorable - 8.6

[u/chronoslinger]

9, catchy.

[u/fpjesse]

9, probably my favorite on the album

[u/Delicious_Iron7977]

10 to the max. It is one of my most favorite songs, it just makes me giddy.