At first, people just sorta treated it like they had all the other music that had played that evening: background music, and nothing more. Gradually, however, the nature of what they were listening to broke through the festivities and pretty much ground things to a halt. By the time the children are screaming for their mommy at the end of “The Kids”, several people had left, the hostess and her best friend were in tears, and everybody else (aside from Loki and I) were supremely bummed out. The party broke up soon afterward. For the next several weekends, Loki was not permitted near the stereo.

Listening to Country Teasers’ The Empire Strikes Back put me in mind of that night. Where Berlin is about degradation, TESB deals in the bleakest misanthropy I’ve ever heard, outside my own thoughts at a time when I was extremely depressed. Granted, it’s tempered here and there with pitch-black humor (“Mos E17ley”, “The Ship”, and I really hope “Raglan Top of Lonsdale Grey” is meant that way as well…), but I imagine that slipping it on at a party might have a similar effect as Berlin.

Come to think of it, though, I suspect that TESB would inspire more fistfights than tears. It’s not an album for the self-righteous or the easily offended. Multiple f-bombs aside (my fave, in response to a missed cue: “Where the fuck is everyone? Come in then. Sorry.”), there are quite a few lines that are ripe for misinterpretation. Take, for example, “Points Of View”. I read it as very definitely anti-racist (if also anti-human), yet the line “Fries* are free, toast is free / kisses, they’re free too / your grand-dad killed a lot of niggers / to buy those free things for you” is intended to push a few buttons and will probably do so.

Which brings up the inevitable comparison to Mark E. Smith/The Fall. There’s a reason every other review of these guys you’ll ever find brings up Mr. Smith at one point or another: the Country Teaser’s debt to The Fall is enormous, from the bare-bones lo-fi rumble of the band to singer/songwriter Ben Wallers’ tuneless croak (not a pejorative, by the way) to the scabrous lyrical attacks on comfy middle-class mores. Which is not to suggest that the CT’s are some sort of Fall karaoke prank. They just mine the same very rich vein.

And they’re both right, of course. We humans are the creatures who can conceive ideals like truth and justice and compassion and then ignore them when it’s convenient and/or expedient. Humanity will eventually destroy itself, and the world will be a better place when it happens. I understand the urge to fight ugly with ugly; I’ve felt it myself. (Be grateful that I’m not inflicting anything I wrote during that period on you now. Most of it has been burned.) The problem with that approach is that the people who really need to hear it (aka the target) never will. They’re able to insulate themselves with talk radio and Fox News (in the US; I don’t know what the UK equivalents would be, but I’m sure they exist) from anything that might cause them to experience anything like empathy. If one of them does happen to be exposed to the message, it’s often some half-wit who misconstrues the message and thinks you actually are the character you’ve created and that you’re actually justifying his selfishness and hatred. Mostly, though, you just end up preaching to the converted.

Speaking personally, I don’t really need my misanthropic side reinforced. Perhaps I’ve gone soft in my old age, I dunno. I can resonate with what the Country Teasers are getting at, I think they do it well, and I think that The Empire Strikes Back should find the larger audience that it most certainly won’t even approach. But I don’t think I’m gonna be playing the disc much after I finish this review, if at all. I’ll probably just file it under “Difficult Listening” and leave it there.

Now if you’ll excuse me, I’m off to go obliterate what little consciousness I have left to me.

*I’m not sure he’s actually saying “fries”, but that’s my best guess.

Country Teasers' The Empire Strikes Back is available from In The Red Records.