Phoney accents are the key feature of SIDES D, which are similar to phony accents but are even more phony by virtue of being misspelled. This short SIDE showcases several key accents that are indeed quite phoney: "Beretta Conquers" sees fit to carry the sqeaking yowl tradition from (the sadly now departed) Mark E. Smith through Stephen Malkmus, though the setting is way more vintage The Fall than Pavement.

"Baby Give Me Some Advice" is a little like Big Star but with more straight up rock 'n roll/garage in its DNA - it fuses Alex Chilton's work from his vocal tenure in the Box Tops (never is his voice more lowdown and steaming than when he was a kid recording the immortal "The Letter") through the estimable canon of Big Star and landing on the shambolic but tender solo years. The lyric of the song has all sorts of hidden references to marriage proposal, mostly in the guise of an (invented) ambivalence: "Should I get down on my knee/ Or should I think twice?/ Baby give me some advice" The idea was the song would be asking the target of the proposal for advice on whether or not to propose, because he trusts and relies on her that much. Funny/sweet, no? I wrote and recorded it after I had decided to propose to Katie but before I actually did, and in the span of those two times I played this recording for her, hoping that later I would reveal how deftly I'd hidden clues about it and how I had chanced blowing the whole thing by her picking up on them at the time.

I had read somewhere that Roger Miller from Mission of Burma had a specific form of tinnitus where he was constantly hearing the notes b, b1/4#, e (if I remember correctly) and I thought, hey, that makes sense because those songs always have those ringing open strings on his guitar, usually with a little bend or dissonance that might make for that quarter sharp. So I created a track that utilized a tuning that might produce his particular ailment. That's track 3, "Variations..."

"I'm Not Dying!" is an expression of glee that's equal parts Minutemen and Pere Ubu in its makeup.

"Panic in Des Moines" is dub that might have come out of London in the late 70s/early 80s. Of course, Public Image Ltd. is a touchstone, but it's more Jah Wobble's contribution than anyone else's.

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