365 Days of Mike Patton: “Baby Let’s Play,” Tomahawk (2013)

I like ephemeral, hazy Mike Patton songs with dark lyrical matter, and so, I clearly like “Baby Let’s Play,” off Tomahawk’s final album Oddfellows. The guitar is creepy and Patton’s spooky background chants are heard behind lyrics such as:

Baby, let’s play dead
I got a hole in my head
Yeah, baby, let’s play dumb
Straight to kingdom come
Let the ashes fall
Fall down on me tonight
Bone dry…
Bone dry…
Bone dry…

Take a listen for yourself and feel the entrancement.

Even the abrupt ending of the tune is jarring, kind of like you were just in a minor car accident after taking your eyes off the road for only a half-second.

Pitchfork called “Baby Let’s Play” an “open-ended creeper” that swells “like the score to a dusty horror flick … Keeping things a little uncomfortable is certainly the goal here; these songs have this kind of festering, acid-stomach chemistry to them, weird and unsettling even when they’re not particularly trying to be.”

I think, though, this song is trying to be weird and unsettling. To my ears, that’s exactly the point.

Previously from Tomahawk’s Oddfellows:

• “The Quiet Few”  Day 28
• “White Hats/Black Hats” (Day 16)