Certain Songs #241: Close Lobsters – “Knee Trembler”

Album: Headache Rhetoric
Year: 1989.

One of the great thing about the 1980s was that if I got into an artist late into their first album cycle, I’d often get inundated with new music from that artist just as I’d digested their debut. And so it was for me as Close Lobsters tossed two albums and an EP into my life — all of which I loved — in the space of little over a year.

After all, yearly releases weren’t an anomaly in the 1980s, but rather an expectation.

Then they broke up, of course, leading me to obsess over what they’d already done and mourn what they’d never do. Especially since their second record, Headache Rhetoric, was tougher and darker than Foxheads Stalk This Land. And while it wasn’t quite as consistent, Headache Rhetoric sported a couple of songs that I absolutely cherish: “Nature Thing” and one of my absolute favorite songs of the 1980s, “Knee Trembler.”

Starting off with a bass-driven speedy Phil Spector beat, “Knee Trembler” kicks into action as Andrew Burnett sings:

I have a headache rhetoRIC!
And I’m so happy I could slit my wrists
This is an empty vessel lesson
A collective works of what the mystic insults
Oh!

“I’m so happy I could slit my wrists” is great enough, but what kills me is Burnett’s little “Oh!” at the end of the verses, followed by the bass and guitars playing doing a call-and-response with the guitar before heading back into the next verse.

This is all pretty great, but they’re just getting warmed up, because about couple minutes of greatness, the mood changes, as Burnett starts singing the title over and over:

A knee trembler
A knee trembler
A knee trembler
A knee trembler

And it feels almost ominous, because we’re deep enough into the song that it would be weird if this was the chorus, but maybe it is, since it’s the title of the song. But it’s not really the chorus, but rather the beginning of one of my favorite pieces of music ever.

I swear on stack of Rickenbackers that the back half of “Knee Trembler” is as great as jangly guitar rock will ever get. It’s up there with “Dropping Names” or “Pilgrimage” or “There is A Light That Never Goes Out.”

How? Like those songs, “Knee Trembler” has so much going on it’s nearly impossible to describe. So let me try: the back half opens with Burnett chanting lyrics like “This is where the universe ends” willy-nilly while guitarists Graeme Wilmington & Tom Donnelly pile on the guitars while everybody else is piling on the backing vocals. Sometimes more is more.

To me it’s clear what Close Lobsters are aiming for here: transcendence. Like they knew this was going to be the last song they’d ever put out into the universe and they wanted to make sure nobody would ever forget it.

And they achieve transcendence at the exact moment that Burnett runs out of words except for an occasional “knee trembler” and the entire world is nothing but guitars and backing vocals all singing the same beautiful thing:

Doo-doo
Doo-doo
Doo-doo
Doo-doo
Doo-doo
Doo-doo
Ahhhhhhhhhh

Doo-doo
Doo-doo
Doo-doo
Doo-doo
Doo-doo
Doo-doo
Ahhhhhhhhhh

Every time I hear it, I want it to go on forever. Instead, it ends up slamming shut far too soon with a resounding “Ahhhhh!” Goodbye.

Kids, this is everything I could ever want in a song: incredibly fun, insanely catchy, and chiming guitars doing battle with chunky guitars. A song where there is so much going on that you can find something new every single time you listen to it. A song that always gets turned up loud when it shows up in the mix.

Video for “Knee Trembler”