Photo titled "Gov. Stubbes, Kansas" from the Bain News Service, c. 1910
I'll admit I didn't really pay much attention to New Zealand songwriter Chris Knox before his 2009 stroke - in the aftermath, the outpouring of affection and admiration for Knox from other musicians was impossible to ignore. They went so far as to compile a 2-CD tribute titled Stroke to pay his medical bills. Seizure is Knox's 1990 album that provided the inspiration for the title and design of the Stroke tribute.
A true solo album, with all instruments and vocals being provided by Knox, Seizure is composed largely of odd character sketches built on fuzzy, lo-fi guitar sounds and pots-and-pans percussion loops. The formula is a little abrasive and can get quite tiresome when it comes to the album's uptempo numbers like "My Dumb Luck", "Break!", and "Wanna!!" (the annoyingness of the song can be gauged by the number of exclamation marks, apparently.) Luckily, these tracks only make up about a third of the album, and the remaining songs range from touching love songs like "Not Given Lightly" to catchy but creepy "outsider" pop songs with titles like "The Woman Inside of Me" and (most charmingly) "Rapist". My favorite is probably "Voyeur", with its disturbing sexual lyric set to a catchy Vaudville-style melody and a very minimal arrangement featuring several multi-tracked Knoxes singing together in varying degrees of menace.
"Voyeur" by Chris Knox
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