Album Review: The Way It Is – Music Is My Boyfriend

The Way It Is – Music Is My Boyfriend (EP)
(2011, self-released)
(Purchase or stream at Bandcamp)

Michael Sanchez may not be the most prolific musician out there, but he is a polymathic talent whose work – whether in music, film, or comedy – never ceases to amaze and impress me. We first met in the back room at 2nd Ave. Pizza when his band The New Death Show (a two-piece with DW Burnam on drums and a CD player on backing tracks – heard on Ball of Wax volumes 3 and 8) played a show with some band or other of mine. It was clear he had an ear for melody and a voice that could sing whatever the hell he wanted, combined with an appetite for musical and sonic experimentation. Not long after (or possibly before) The New Death Show disbanded, he began writing and performing solo as The Way It Is (heard on Ball of Wax volumes 2, 4, 6, 16, 18, and 19). His 2006 full-length album Be Still My Beating is a classic in my house that I still go back to regularly. It’s sad to me that most of Seattle has no idea what it lost the day Michael moved to Chicago.

Five years later, just when I was beginning to fear he’d entirely abandoned music to focus on his comedy career in that cold, wind-blown city, he pops out Music Is My Boyfriend, a very short (four songs that add up to under 10 minutes) but highly satisfying EP. In this short span, Sanchez manages to cover all the territory for which I know and love him: brilliantly simple arrangements; a voice that can be tender and hushed or bright and soaring; smart lyrics that range from heartbreaking to darkly hilarious; and lush instrumentation, abetted by a skill and inventiveness with GarageBand that puts a lot of professional producers with “real” equipment to shame (I’ll even forgive his use of Auto-Tune – an effect that I assume will sound as dated and cheesy in a few years as gated reverb and chorus guitars do now – on the synth-pop number “Romance Is Rubbish”).

Music Is My Boyfriend was apparently written and originally released in connection with an e-book by Tao Lin called Conor Oberst Sex. Not having read the book (in fact, being constitutionally incapable of reading more than a paragraph of Tao Lin’s work at a time), I don’t know how well these pieces fit together, but I can say that listening to this EP is far more satisfying for me than reading Tao Lin or having sex with Conor Obsert could possibly be.

In an inversion of my usual approach to album reviews, I have now spent much more time writing this piece than I have listening to the album in question (and it’s on its fourth repetition of the day right now). It’s probably best if you just go and listen (and buy) for yourself.

But first, here are two videos for two different (rock vs. acoustic) versions of the tiny but delightful song “You Chose Heads,” which isn’t on this EP but contains the same spirit of brevity and genius.