BARR is the moniker for the spoken word work of multi-disciplinary artist Brendan Fowler, who started his career playing high energy spoken-word punk shows back in 2001. Since then, he’s kept busy co-running Doggpony Records, co-editing Artist Network Program Quarterly (a free arts magazine), playing with two other bands (New England Roses, Car Clutch), and most recently displaying object-based art exhibitions at galleries around the U.S. BARR hasn’t put out an album since 2007’s Summary, a record overlooked when it came out on the now defunct experimental Kill Rock Stars sub-label 5 Rue Christine.
Fowler’s a strange character primarily because of his impassioned vocal delivery. This style was compared too loosely to hip hop artists in the handful of reviews after Summary was released. With Fowler’s continued participation in the DIY art gallery scene, the comparison doesn’t make much sense. A spoken-word provocateur like Karen Finley might be a better fit for discussing BARR’s work.
Lyrically, Summary strives to be viscerally emotional and perplexingly intellectual at the same time. He weaves meta-commentaries on capital-lettered Art/Form/Truth seamlessly together with sparse but intimate confessions (“I just want to hold someone”). Vague circular philosophical logic (or pseudo-philosophical if you like) about making art is contrasted with highly specific personal narratives on abuse, cheating, depression, love, etc. (“Complete Consumption of Us Both,” “Was I Are You,” “Untitled,” “Half of Two Times Two”).
I remember listening to the album fairly often in 2007. Most of the reviews attacked the record for being too “meta” and self-referential. I think that’s the point! In his missteps and rootless explorations into his own art, Fowler projects the vulnerability of overindulgent self-skepticism. Whether you like that kind of thing seems to me a matter of personal taste.
“The Song is The Single” acts dually as a criticism of pop songs and as a criticism of itself. But the finale “Context Ender” presents the most cohesive message in Summary’s sprawling art philosophy. This message: context matters. In an interview, Fowler claimed the track was his favorite because of its musicality. “It’s a song about Pitchfork. I kind of figured they’d trash the record because they actively don’t like me. They’re immature — this much we know. I’m not taking away from their cultural thing — but you can!” That seems like a pretty fitting message to close off a record that’s simultaneously inward and outward looking — carefully skeptical of its own value and freely dissecting the way art is produced and consumed. Whether or not you find it pretentious and overreaching or intelligent and intimate is still subject to the thesis. Context matters.
