It is hardly hyperbole that I immediately loved 12 Rods after about 30 seconds of listening to their music. They possessed a very good and rare sense of experimentation and interesting musical arrangement mixed with catchy melodies, strong drumming, and genuine lyrics. Unfortunately, they never got big, were abandoned by their label after their second album, and never really expanded beyond their regional popularity in Minnesota. Still, they remain a very important band to me that evokes excitement and admiration.
This song, “Telephone Holiday”, is the closing number from their final album from 2002 entitled Lost Time. It is funny to think that while the whole musical world over was busy praising post-punk revival and heralding some sort of second coming of NYC bands, this album was receiving no attention for its great songwriting, performances, and blending of rock with other musical approaches.
“Telephone Holiday” itself is by no means their most experimental or complex song in their discography (it sticks to a standard verse/chorus/verse/chorus/bridge/outro format), but it does seem to mix in all their eras (from the gay? EP to Split Personalities to Separation Anxieties to Lost Time) into a convenient 4:42 package. The guitar and bass interweave in an almost impossible to ignore earworm in the first part of the opening verse, but then the second guitar (at 0:30) reveals the underlying tension of the song to gorgeous effect: “I’m a bad, bad person and I just wanted to play.” By the chorus, the ultimate intention of the narrator to avoid his Other is fully disclosed with swirling (and violent) synths entering, and finally shifting into a chaotic disco rhythm with incredibly melancholy synthesized strings. It is a perfect representation of 12 Rods’ nervous energy manifesting at full potential.
To no surprise, the narrator gets destroyed in the song, as leaving this one night stand now becomes an increasingly fucked up situation (“Little did I know, you were still in high school.”) and as the song gets to the bridge, the dramatics are set to stun. Is it the narrator, or the Other, who is now lamenting, “I’m waiting… for someone to TURN ME ON! Make it SEXY! Make it last LONG!”? It could sound all so sleazy on paper, but instead there is a depressing sense of remorse and desperation in the delivery; the sexual innuendo can double as desire for a meaningful and long lasting relationship. The narrator laments, that while he wishes for this too, that emotional distance and abandonment are just ingrained in nature and cannot be avoided.
Is any of that even what the song is about? Who really knows, but I have always found that 12 Rods mixed sexual tension within relationships in their lyrical content very well (see: "Kaboom”, “I Wish You Were A Girl”, “Accidents Waiting to Happen”), and it is a mature and rare quality in most modern music. If anything, the situation in “Telephone Holiday” is an eternal subject in pop music (see: "50 Ways to Leave Your Lover"), but now judgement is entirely ambiguous as it can often be in real life.
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