On September 11, 2012 The Size Queens launched a Kickstarter campaign to raise completion funds for their 5th record. This video presents the accompanying texts from that successful campaign as well video solicitations that were produced at the time. The plan was for the fundraising effort to fail, as an unrealized dream (or wasted effort) would have conceptually suited many of the ideas behind “Consumption Work.” However, after a 19-day campaign, The Size Queens raised $1,529. Their original goal was $999.
The “rewards” for supporting the Kickstarter campaign were designed as “consumption work” so that every backer would have an opportunity to pay for the privilege of performing labor. Not surprisingly, only one “fan” (Nicole Brodsky) bothered to write a press release and here it is…
“Consumption Work: Tammy, Cybetraiat, at the Aral Sea” is the sixth full-length album released by The Size Queens, a San Francisco-based band made up, in part, of the song-writing team of Michael Mullen and Adam Klein. In the summer of 2012, the death of the Queens’s producer, engineer, and drummer Tim Mooney (American Music Club) meant that Mooney’s aesthetic, heard on “The Size Queens III” and “Appetite for Redaction,” would not be fully present on this album. Even without Mooney’s heaving drums, the Queens and their new engineer Wally Sound manage another emotional and intellectual tour, this time through an environmental wasteland where people think checking out and bagging their own groceries is decadent. Author Mary Gaitskill has called The Size Queens both cruel and kind, this album being no exception; cycling through dirges and fugues and at least one revival hymn, “Consumption Work” gives as much as it takes. In short, the Queens wrote it, but they want their fans to write about it, and do everything else.
“Consumption Work” is homework, the kind you do on the floor of your bedroom, blasting a song called “Crocs,” stomach pressed into the carpet your father picked out, when you are defiant without cause, and hollering Klein lyrics: “Mother don’t come in, shut my door, I am working on my tablets!” The Size Queens, in their latest “song cycle,” have created a discourse which not only inspires tablet-making and tablet-taking but also encourages you to study for that final exam—the one for the class you’ve neglected all semester. The reading list—from Ursula Huws’ “The Making of a Cybertariat: Virtual Work In A Real World” to Donna Haraway’s “Situated Knowledges” and, of course, the Crocs Golf catalogue—is never easy. In fact, like the album itself, it’s tough as kale! But what the Queens bring to “Consumption Work’s” aural aesthetic is not simply a musical study guide of the arid Aral sea; they know what you want, something floaty yet focused. Mullen’s tinkling piano parts are exactly that, like dripping water that swells to a wave. They know you want a baby who never pees.
Meant to be listened to fully without interruption, the sixth album moves in time and space with an old-timey end-of-the-world feel (kind of like praying), referencing many classic songs without ever attempting to show knowledge of how a song should be written. The opening song, “The Rally” moans and hums its way through a bad trip, trickling towards “Tammy 1,” during which we meet the lovelorn in her bathtub. Two more Tammy interludes come later in the record, but is it the same Tammy? And between the Tammies, other Tammies? She’s the obnoxious big sister in “Harvey’s” because she wants to go to the automat where the dead are buried. She might be dying. And then the record lets the pretty take over, in “The New World” featuring Hannah Marcus (The Wingdale Community Singers) and “Nudist Colony Photographs” featuring Carlos Forster (Forstars), both performed with tender harmonies. The remainder of the album manages to both touch and repulse.
“Tammy’s Tablets” finishes the cycle, progressing toward death or regressing back to it. Lyric turns to spoken word and back again. Klein’s vocals are bratty, as Tammy explains her final plan: a post-war parade and her own eulogy. Even the whistle-like recorder, one of Wally Sound’s many additions, might be too majestic for this song despite its stupidity. But the record isn’t stupid; it’s just chronically optimistic in its address of an unfolding apocalypse, and beautiful no matter what they say.
