Self-Ish
Will Wood and the Tapeworms
Self-Ish by Will Wood and the Tapeworms was released on August 23, 2016. It is a folk rock album about the journey to find oneself. The album is meant to be listened to in order to hear the journey of self discovery. The album begins with the song “Self”, a song about committing to Will Wood “becoming himself again”. The entire rest of the album is related to this idea of finding who he is without really knowing how to do it. The next song, “2012”, examines the person who Will used to be in the year 2012. The song is highly critical of his past actions and uses the fact that he can’t remember much of the year to emphasize this.
“Cotard’s Solution” delves into the question of free will. Will asks if his actions are his own or that of destiny, and if they are destiny’s, should he be blamed for them? The jazzy almost sleazy nature of the instruments in this song compliment the disturbed nature of the lyrics. The next song, “Mr. Capgras Encounters a Secondhand Vanity: Tulpamancer’s Prosopagnosia /Pareidolia (As Direct Result of Trauma to the Fusiform Gyrus)”, keeps a similar jazz feeling ot “Cotard’s Solution”. This song focuses on trying to recognize oneself and trying to prove that you are truly you. In the end of its final chorus Will uses lyrics from a song later in the album, “ Hand Me My Shovel, I’m Going In!”.
The next song: “ The Song with Five Names, a.k.a. Soapbox Tao, a.k.a. Checkmate Atheists! a.k.a. Neospace Government, a.k.a. You Can Never Know” continues the fight to recognize oneself. One top of recognizing who you are, the song also shifts to asking if the journey of self discovery is actually improving things or not. The song also takes the lyrical melody of “ Hand Me My Shovel, I’m Going In!” and uses it as a saxophone melody in the background. This song also begins the metaphor for digging into one’s psyche in its choruses and backing vocals with lines like “You can break a shovel when you break new ground, You dig dirt up when you dig deep down” and “Gotta get to the bottom of it”.
“Hand Me My Shovel, I’m Going In!” is the song I consider to be the climax of this album. Several of the songs before this such as “The Song With Five Names” and “Mr. Capgras Encounters a Secondhand Vanity” make several references to the song in melody, lyrics, and instrumentals. “Hand Me My Shovel, I’m Going In!” delves into the desperation Will has to understand why he does what he does, despite the consequences the search seems to be having for him. The cong gradually gets more chaotic and sporadic and Will Wood repeatedly states things like “This is not enough”, “Gotta get to the bottom of this”, and even “If it kills me!”. These phrases repeat throughout the song, becoming increasingly desperate, with the backing music becoming increasingly intense.
“Dr. Sunshine is Dead” is almost like the recovery from “Hand Me My Shovel, I’m Going In!”. The song questions many of the same things that the previous songs had questioned, but brings up the topic of fear. It discusses the fear of all the questions as well as facing them. It shows Will’s decision to persevere in his search for himself despite the fears that surround it. The final song on the album is “-ish”, a reprise of “Self”. In “-ish” Will ponders death and change and time. He comes to the conclusion that it doesn’t matter who he is because he knows he will continue to be.
Self-Ish is a masterful story of self discovery, delving into what it means to be you, and if who you are even matters in the grand scheme of it all. It weighs the meaning of life and death, time and space, and how a human identity fits into it all. This is an album I highly recommend to anyone and everyone.