Inline Bowline

I have something to say about Barenaked Ladies and Jim Creeggan again and I don't have anyone to talk to about this so it goes on the internet.

You already know I like Jim Creeggan as both a musician and a songwriter. He comes from a classical contrabass background, fell in love with fusion as a teen, and played like a jazz guy with his very-much-jazz-guy brother Andy for the first few years of the Barenaked Ladies. Second album, he starts playing electric bass in the band, but even though the songs are a little more rock & roll (grunge was happening and all the quiet bands tried getting loud) Jim on electric bass still sounds like a jazz fusion guy. The third album has a much more raw sound - super dry, they don't have a keyboard player on this record, everything sounds like the warehouse they recorded it in. And many of those songs hit harder than the ones on the predecessor, but no bass guitar. Jim switched to an electric upright bass. What a weird guy. What a weird band.

That album, Born On A Pirate Ship, features two Jim-led songs. The book I read implies that the band was in a state of relative turmoil after the second album flopped, the keyboardist (Jim's brother) left, and if I recall, they switched management or labels or something? And so Jim picked up a lot of slack - playing keyboards and strings, writing arrangements. The two songs he brought feature him on lead vocals (notably with lead singer Steven not even credited as an instrumentalist on those tracks).

The first, Spider In My Room, is a rewrite of Takin' Out The Garbage from the first Brothers Creeggan record, and for my money it is an upgrade - I miss Andy's weird little percussion setup, cuicas and cowbells just going off, and I kind of like that the verses are totally stripped down to just guitar and voice, but the song itself is much more amorphous in comparison to this final version. He recorded the Stoney Park Singers doing an absolutely iconic pow-wow call & response, and Tyler's warehouse drumming helps it fit in with other album tracks like Just A Toy and I Live With It Every Day.

The other Jim song, In The Drink, is just Jim and Ed gently playing guitars. It's much more similar to a Brothers Creeggan song, I think, but at this point Andy wasn't playing much guitar yet. It's a nice little collection of fun light-jazz guitar tricks, some cool harmonic and textural stuff, but it's a weird choice for a Barenaked Ladies album given that only half of the band plays on it. This doesn't really happen in this band.

There wasn't another BNL song with Jim on lead till two albums later, Maroon. I don't know if they started hankering for submissions from the rest of the band or what, but there are two Kevin b-sides and one Jim b-side, plus one amazing Steve & Stephen Duffy b-side which probably would've made it to basically any other BNL album but was way too sonically dour to fit. Kevin's song Hidden Sun feels like it was written while in hospital during the Stunt aftermath, the song feels like it's in suspended animation. His other one Born Human feels much more like a solo Kevin song. But that's not what we're talking about.

We're talking about the Jim Creeggan song "Inline Bowline," written for Maroon. It matches energy with the rest of the record, sounds like too many people singing and too many people playing guitars and the compression is a little much for me. But I don't know if it would work as well stripped down, with any other engineer, for any other album. There's kind of nothing here.

Inline bowline, inline bowline, inline bowline, inline bowline. First you tie it round your hand, he showed me so I would understand. It's the handiest knot, wasn't in the book that I bought.

This is nothing. This is even less than the minimalist rock & roll song Rocking Chair from Brothers Creeggan's Sleepyhead. It feels like the definition of filler.

We all were tying knots at the game. We all were glad that he'd came. We toyed with tying the noose - no one knew he'd give it use.

Hi, I've been listening to this song for 15 years and I only understood the meaning of the last line until yesterday day. I thought it was just another kind of knot to learn. Fuck me.

Did he think that he was nothing? Only ending his life was left to try? Over, turned over, I'm left to ask, "really, why?"

See, back in 2007 or whatever I thought this was a sudden left turn. Here's a song about a happy memory I have, when a friend taught me how to tie a fancy knot. Unfortunately he killed himself. Well, let's not dwell, let's talk more about the knot.

I use it to tie up my canoe. I use it to tie my shoe. It's handy on a whim. This knot is tied to him.

Aw, that's sweet, teenage me thought. He can't ever tie this knot without thinking about the friend that taught him.

No, there is a much more literal meaning to "this knot is tied to him."

Fucking hell. John Flansburgh, eat your heart out.