track 01s PART ONE

mary mary - believer

these are of course the gospelists behind 2000's "shackles (praise you)", a song which while enduringly good-natured, could only ever be described as OMG SO MIDTEMPO. really in about the last 4 years the art of being avowedly, unstoppably midtempo has almost died out. to live the dream you cannot hint at slower or faster bpms (for instance songs with obvious electro patterns slowed to midtempo = fake midtempo) or make midtempo just one feather in your bpm bow, it is a discipline which requires the absence of other competing disciplines.

this plodding aesthetic was perhaps mostly based on the mid-late 90s producer's programming ineptitude, and on "believer" mary mary show us what we have all lost how far we have all come with a spring-coiled doubletime-ish banger in which the duo describe the times they were spared from death by a merciful, gospelly god.

first there is a house fire, eerily predicted by their mum who tells them to go stay at an auntie's house. (um guys perhaps it was your mum who started the fire? i dont mean to cast aspersions but was this ever investigated??) then there is a car accident from which mary/mary emerges unscathed. the whole thing is very intense, and the startling high-voiced singsongy intro is what pushed me into bothering with their self-titled 2005 album in the first place. (the rest of it aint as good.)