HEAVY MUSIC HISTORY: 55 Cadillac – Andrew W.K.
The ANDREW W.K. rabbit hole is long, deep and impossible to concisely summarise. It teems with conspiracies about manufactured identities, elaborate vision statements and a shadowy background figure known only by the pseudonym STEEV MIKE. It’s also by many accounts entirely perpetuated by the man himself, Andrew Wilkes-Krier. While an air of mystique still swirls around W.K., the conspiracy was at fever pitch in the late noughties. After two successful albums of motivational speeches delivered via guitars, Andrew W.K. was a recognisable face in the rock scene. He may have been divisive, but music fans at least knew who he was. Or did they?
Fans had been questioning ANDREW W.K.’s identity as early as 2004, with concert goers claiming the person they had seen on stage under the W.K. banner wasn’t the face they knew from MTV. The aforementioned STEEV MIKE hacked W.K.’s website, claiming the musician was a fake. Curiously, not only was the third ANDREW W.K. album (2006’s Close Calls With Brick Walls) only released in Japan and Korea, but it came with a radical change in voice for the one-man party machine – from beer-keg bark to an unrecognisably clean pseudo pop-punk tone. Accompanying press photos were just as unrecognisable, with an overall uncanny valley feel about them – was this really the same guy behind I Get Wet and The Wolf? It wasn’t until 2008 that Andrew himself shed some light on who he was. At a spoken word gig at Madame Jojo’s in London, he revealed that ‘ANDREW W.K.’ was a persona created by a committee and he was just “the next person playing” the role – all done in the “spirit of commerce” and “entertainment”.
Mystery solved, then. ‘ANDREW W.K.’ was nothing but a cynical corporate construct and an exercise in meticulous branding. A crushing disappointment for those of us invested in the man, the music and the message, but at least it was closure. Allegedly.
It was some surprise then when the next ANDREW W.K. release was slated for 2009 – 55 Cadillac. Whoever he was, this was to be the first collection of original material in the UK and US since 2003 under the ANDREW W.K. moniker. And what better way for the ‘King of Partying’ to return than with a collection of improvised, instrumental solo piano pieces? As unpredictable as the ‘ANDREW W.K.’ trajectory had been up until this point, 55 Cadillac still came as a shock.
Alongside 55 Cadillac however also came a new version of the truth behind ANDREW W.K. Everything we thought we had closure on was reframed by Andrew himself in an article he wrote for The Guardian to promote the record. Shedding light on some of the previous years’ strangeness, W.K. shared, “At the end of 2004, an old friend of mine got in to some business trouble and basically decided to take it out on me.” Gag orders and legal shenanigans followed, with Andrew Wilkes-Krier being forbidden from using his own name in the US entertainment industry. “We were in a debate about who owned the rights to my image, and who should get credit for ‘inventing’ it,” he elaborated. Although clearly not the full story, W.K.’s article was able to both solidify and walk back some of what he had said at Madame Jojo’s a year prior. Eventually however, Wilkes-Krier and the team around him were able to reach an agreement with this ex-friend that would allow him to release music again.
It was clear that Andrew W.K. – who at this point appeared more like a real, legitimate person again – had had a weight lifted from his shoulders. “I wanted this new 55 Cadillac album to sound like freedom. The sound of a piano being played by a free man.” In many ways, 55 Cadillac was never quite as left-field as it appeared. Wilkes-Krier has always been an accomplished pianist and the ivories were his go-to instrument, even when accompanied by walls of guitars and excitable shouting. Returning to his musical home as his first statement of freedom seemed only natural.
Though 55 Cadillac is split in to eight tracks, it plays out more like a stream of consciousness, with hooks and motifs eschewed in favour of a constant musical momentum. W.K. went in with a completely blank canvas, telling Punk News that he didn’t know what he played until he listened back to the recordings. Stylistically, Andrew is unrestricted, often flirting with multiple genres in the space of one track. After the increasingly frantic revving up of Begin The Engine, Seeing The Car jumps from contemplative and wistful ballad to MOZART-infused lightness. Night Driver’s flashes of hope and bouncy rhythms initially evoke musical theatre before devolving into discordant, spiralling trills and W.K. drumming out rhythms on the hood of his piano. There are even hints of more traditional W.K. fare, with 5’s positive chord progression and peppy rhythm feeling like the skeleton of something that could slot in on The Wolf. It all culminates with the short and triumphant closer, Cadillac, which briefly breaks form with a tease of percussion, guitars and a single vocal line. It’s a surprisingly affecting end for such a minimalist album.
Perhaps less surprising, reaction to 55 Cadillac was mixed. Some outlets like AV Club lavished it with unexpected praise, while others dismissed it as a vanity project. It certainly remains the most idiosyncratic part of ANDREW W.K.’s discography (and that’s saying something when one of your albums is a collection of Mobile Suit Gundam covers – which, for the record, is sick as hell), but there is something charming about its offbeat sincerity.
It would be nearly a decade before ANDREW W.K. would re-emerge with further original music, this time in a more expected form – 2018’s righteous You’re Not Alone. In the nonsensical canon of ANDREW W.K., 55 Cadillac marked a reset of sorts, with Andrew himself taking control again. Not just of his music, but of his narrative too. We may never know the full story, but for a brief period in 2009 the truth was clear – ANDREW W.K. was a free man and all he wanted to do was play the piano.
55 Cadillac was originally released on September 1st, 2009 via Ecstatic Peace!/Skyscraper Music Maker.
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