Album of the Week: Fear of Death

Fuck sports. The Phillies are below .500, the Sixers are an embarrassment, the Eagles don't exist in the summer. Fuck podcasts. Why listen to people talk about music when you can just listen to the fucking music? Fuck TV, especially anything in the zeitgeist. Fuck anything your mom recommended you watch, because it sucks, and you don't have that streaming service that it's on anyway. Fuck Succession. Fuck Marvel shows, and fuck Marvel movies. Fuck Netflix, and fuck every single Netflix original show and every single Netflix original movie. Fuck your smartphone. Fuck TikTok. Fuck the algorithm. Fuck the screen.

Music forever.

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WEEK 225 — May 21-27, 2023

Fear of Death

by Tim Heidecker

LISTEN:

Spotify | YouTube | Bandcamp | Apple

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PICKED BY SUNNY

SUNNY'S COMMENTS: "Weather's getting nicer, so about time I pick another album a bit off-center (see: tmbg, ween). I also notice the only PoYB 'Heidecker' mention is for 'Dog Shit'; let's widen that up a bit."

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ALBUM DETAILS

GENRE: Pop rock

RELEASED: September 25, 2020

LENGTH: 40:53

TRACKLIST:

1. Prelude to Feelings
2. Come Away with Me
3. Backwards
4. Fear of Death
5. Someone Who Can Handle You
6. Nothing
7. Say Yes
8. Property
9. Little Lamb
10. Let It Be
11. Long As I've Got You
12. Oh How We Drift Away

LYRICS: Genius.com

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ARTIST DETAILS

PRONOUNS: he/him/his

ABOUT: Timothy Heidecker was born in February 1976 in Allentown, PA. He graduated from Temple University, where he met his comedy partner Eric Wareheim. They are known as Tim & Eric. Heidecker's day job is comedy, and he has an extensive filmography of Adult Swim shows, podcasts, an acting appearances in movie and TV. Music is a significant side gig, though. The music has usually skewed as comedy, but not necessarily, as far as I can tell. Wikipedia says that he played in various bands while living in Philadelphia, and even made an appearance in a 2008 Ben Folds video.

DISCOGRAPHY: As far as solo studio albums go, this is Heidecker's fifth of six. The first was Cainthology: Songs in the Key of Cain in 2011, an album of parody songs about Herman Cain's presidential campaign. The most recent is 2022's High School. Let's not even mention the 2017 trump album. There are also the non-solo albums, including some compilations of music from Tim & Eric productions, a couple albums with Davin Wood, who composed the music for a lot of Tim & Eric shows, and a couple albums as "The Yellow River Boys," which as far as I can tell are just Heidecker solo albums under a fake name (Vice Magazine named Urine St. Station the best album of 2013).

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ADDITIONAL INFO

READING SOME SHIT: 2020 article for Interview Magazine, in which Fear of Death's co-producer and co-writer Natalie Mering, a.k.a. Weyes Blood, interviews Tim Heidecker

WATCHING SOME SHIT: An episode of Tom Goes to the Mayor, a show I used to watch in 2005 long before I knew anything about Tim &/or Eric

RECORD CLUB WHEN THIS ALBUM WAS RELEASED: Have a little respect for Erasure's The Innocents, and for the five reviews we received from Joe, Nate, Rachel, Sunny, and Pam.

PREVIOUSLY ON RECORD CLUB: Tim Heidecker hails from a PA suburb within two hours of Philadelphia, just like Ween (New Hope), the Districts (Lilitz), and Taylor Swift (West Reading). He is the third RC alumnus to graduate from Temple, after Daryl Hall and John Oates.

With his cover of "Let It Be," Heidecker does the second Beatles cover in an RC album, after the Feelies did "Everybody's Got Something to Hide Except for Me and My Monkey." Fear of Death is also apparently a concept album, which is rare for RC, but we did at least one so far—Radical Face's The Family Tree: The Roots.

Co-producer Natalie Mering (Weyes Blood) was featured on Imploding the Mirage, and has worked with Perfume Genius. Co-producer Jonathan Rado (of Foxygen) also produced Imploding the Mirage, and has worked with Houndmouth. We literally just heard the work of engineer Sarah Tudzin (a.k.a. Illuminati Hotties) on the record. Robert Beatty did the album artwork here, and has also done an album cover for U.S. Girls, Real Estate, and Tame Impala, but none were RC albums.

Finally, I'm reluctant to group together Heidecker and Weird Al, despite the fact that they are both comedians who write and perform music. I know that Heidecker has done "comedy music," but I've noted that several publications describe Fear of Death as Heidecker's "attempt at writing something serious." I don't know how true that it without actually listening to it, so let's find out together.

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Happy listening, RC family!
Have a great week!