I think it’s clear at this point that if mainstream rock music is to continue to evolve, at all, it will have to in some way prioritize an element of funk, as a sort of stylistic catalyst or anchor. This is just my measurement from imbibing artists like Hozier, which seem bent toward a white-boy dancing motif, not always to regrettable results.
It’s in this vein, as well, that I present “Druganaut”; the only foray into anything semi-funky on Black Mountain’s venerable self-titled album. And fitting, then, with the slight inclination toward genre-bending at work on “Druganaut”; is a set of lyrics which encompasses a vast sense of spectral behavior, veering into, of course, the destructive and disastrous.
It should be pleasing to the listener, of course, that “Druganaut” stomps along in proud, Apollonian major chords, ingratiating itself nicely to all the fruit-juicy “wave(s) of mutilation” prevalent in the history of pop and alternative rock. Anyway, the urgency in Stephen McBean’s voice, as well as the fuzzy, reverb-laden production foment more than enough sense of ominousness, helping this song to be as hard to categorize as it is continually rewarding to listen to and analyze.
The elusiveness of meaning, then, only explodes into greater proportions, with the impending lyrics which, while precociously representing one of the few instances of tongue-in-cheek on this album, seem to assimilate bloody warfare with pompous, glorious things like “lighting up the sky” and other de facto beacons of victory. On paper, at times, this might seem like a pretty run-of-the-mill war satire from a bunch of bleeding-heart, hippie grunge-rock stoners in Vancouver. And, by many accounts, that’s just what it is.
So what role do “drugs” play in all of this madness? It seems like an especially pertinent topic to bring up since the band saw fit to include a reference to them in the title of the song itself. The curious inclusion of drugs in this otherwise relatively conventional, systematic operation also saves the song from succumbing to cheesiness, I think, bolsters it thematically so as to save it from stagnancy and public-service-announcement territory.
It’s also, though, ironic that Black Mountain would implicitly vilify the use of “drugs,” since on multiple occasions (in “No Satisfaction” and “Faulty Times”; specifically) they mention marijuana, in slang, as an imminent band activity. (Of course, that they’re condemning drugs in “druganaut” can be deduced from their association with “blood in the sky,” and the band’s general penchant for lyrically problematizing war on the album.)
So “Druganaut” is an achievement in style, as I think all would agree, and this album generally garnered very favorable reviews, and precipitated a devout cult following. With this being the case, McBean and company aren’t really held to a strict code when it comes to lyrics. The words in “Druganaut” work, it seems, for the very reason of seeming so off-the-cuff — they’re scant, and they deal in big, broad concepts. The Internet is very mum on the issue of the messages behind Black Mountain’s songs, preferring commentary on their retro-rock style and band member dynamic.
“Druganaut”; anyway, is an interesting piece, on one hand for straying from earnest political mourning into satire, and another, I think, for its kitschy technique of giving a double meaning to the concept of “drugs.” On this track, illicit substances act in part as fanfare, but they’re also the punching bag for McBean’s parody of American culture, the mythical “druganaut” figure basically presented as someone who would administer the sort of mental alteration to the general public which would make things like warfare explosions and bloodshed seem like beautiful, inspiring phenomena, as they are presented, in black humor, in the song itself.
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