There are certain phrases you probably shouldn’t say immediately before making a potentially dangerous decision. “I’ve got a great idea” is one. “Trust me” is another. But perhaps the most relevant is: “What could possibly go wrong?”
That’s the question Norwegian alternative rock project Gubbe asks on its new track of the same name, primarily because subtlety clearly wasn’t going to help anyone here.
Written by songwriter Bent Olav Olsen, the song centers on impressively questionable decision-making and turns it into a jaunty, guitar-driven alt-rock bop. It’s melodic without becoming sweet, heavy without drowning out the melody and far too optimistic to recognize the obvious flaws in the plan.
“What Could Possibly Go Wrong” is funny, but its humor isn’t simply built around absurdly bad ideas. Beneath the punchline is something much more familiar: that particular kind of foolish self-assurance where you know something could go spectacularly wrong, briefly acknowledge it and then decide that thinking about the consequences sounds like someone else’s problem.
We’ve all done this. Maybe not while wrestling a full-grown bear, but something close enough.
For a song about making bold moves, the dense arrangement fits perfectly. Thick guitars and pounding drums throw plenty of ideas at the listener at once, making everything sound chaotic and completely under control simultaneously. It’s an appropriately frantic soundtrack for a decision-making process that has consequences three business days later.
The best of it has to be Olsen’s vocal approach. Instead of approaching this in the only truly reasonable way the story allows: hysteria, he seems to approach it all with a barely suppressed deadpan.
The absolute absence of any ornamentation benefits this; there’s a cozy, almost reassuring feel to Gubbe, buried beneath the clanging guitars, like a deeply flawed and funnier far-away friend imparting on you an anecdote about a bad decision they made with barely any shame. Even at its most ludicrous point, the situation maintains an odd and comforting equanimity, Olsen accepts that this is something that might end catastrophically and that’s not quite reason enough to avoid having an absolute blast. It’s not all that surprising that Gubbe sounds so inherently casual, that it was recorded with some friends, rather than some rigorously-produced track it feels far more like a few buddies getting together and just having a ridiculous blast with some noises.
All said, you’re not really in any position to look to Gubbe for a way out of being a complete idiot. You just need something catchy for why, from time to time, you feel completely ok with it all and if the answer to “What could possibly go wrong?” is “probably quite a lot,” at least Gubbe has made the soundtrack to finding out.
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About the Author
A tenured media critic known working as a ghost writer, freelance critic for various publications around the world, the former lead writer of review blogspace Atop The Treehouse and content creator for Manila Bulletin.
