How Do I Know If My Cat Likes Me

Two organists and a sound poet walk into a studio. What results is not a punchline, although it is often funny: How do I know if my cat likes me?, the first record from Swedish musicians Ellen Arkbro and Hampus Lindwall and Norwegian artist Hanne Lippard, is a collection of existential meditations on the uselessness of language. "Modern Spanking," adapted from an existing text of Lippard's, free-associates it's way from the phrase "online banking" toward "breathing down your neck banking / stabbing an open wound banking" and "sexy but bankrupt"-you guessed it-"banking." "The long goodbye" imagines an excruciating dialogue between acquaintances who can't politely disengage: "It's always enriching to explore new ideas with you!" deadpans Lippard, who replies to herself, "Definitely! I hope to see you soon! / I hope so too! / I'm really looking forward to the next time! / I couldn't agree more!" Punctuated by Arkbro and Lindwall's majestic organ chords, which thwart their own grandiosity with impeccable comic timing, How do I know if my cat likes me? extends the lineage of Roberts Ashley and Barry's droll concept poetry, hammering at the sounds of language until they dislodge all signifiers through pleasurably numbing repetition. It's like doing a Captcha over and over until all the characters fuzz to hieroglyphs, or finding oneself mired in an endless, tautological customer-service argument, but after you dead-end at nonsense, you stumble into an unexpectedly transcendent beauty, where language flips from pure function to pure aesthetic, shimmering with possibility.