''The Rose Has Teeth in the Mouth of a Beast'' is the sixth studio album by

Matmos Matmos is an experimental electronic music duo originally from San Francisco but now residing in Baltimore. M. C. (Martin) Schmidt and Drew Daniel are the core members, but they frequently include other artists on their records and in their per ...

. Each of the album's songs is dedicated to a notable

gay ''Gay'' is a term that primarily refers to a homosexual person or the trait of being homosexual. The term originally meant 'carefree', 'cheerful', or 'bright and showy'. While scant usage referring to male homosexuality dates to the late 1 ...

lesbian A lesbian is a Homosexuality, homosexual woman.Zimmerman, p. 453. The word is also used for women in relation to their sexual identity or sexual behavior, regardless of sexual orientation, or as an adjective to characterize or associate n ...

person who has influenced the duo, and this influence is reflected in the songs themselves. For examples, "Rag for

William S. Burroughs William Seward Burroughs II (; February 5, 1914 – August 2, 1997) was an American writer and visual artist, widely considered a primary figure of the Beat Generation and a major postmodern author who influenced popular cultur ...

" features the clatter of a type writer and a gunshot, representing the William Tell incident, and "Tract for

Valerie Solanas Valerie Jean Solanas (April 9, 1936 – April 25, 1988) was an American radical feminist known for the ''SCUM Manifesto'', which she self-published in 1967, and for her attempt to murder artist Andy Warhol in 1968. Solanas had a turbulent child ...

" contains excerpts from the ''

SCUM Manifesto ''SCUM Manifesto'' is a radical feminist manifesto by Valerie Solanas, published in 1967. It argues that men have ruined the world, and that it is up to women to fix it. To achieve this goal, it suggests the formation of SCUM, an organization ded ...

''. As with earlier releases, the duo make use of field recordings in the music, recordings that range from ordinary things to more absurd sounds, such as a recording of a

bovine Bovines (subfamily Bovinae) comprise a diverse group of 10 genera of medium to large-sized ungulates, including cattle, bison, African buffalo, water buffalos, and the four-horned and spiral-horned antelopes. The evolutionary relationship betwee ...

uterus The uterus (from Latin ''uterus'', plural ''uteri'') or womb () is the organ in the reproductive system of most female mammals, including humans that accommodates the embryonic and fetal development of one or more embryos until birth. The uter ...

. The album's title is taken from a line in

Ludwig Wittgenstein Ludwig Josef Johann Wittgenstein ( ; ; 26 April 1889 – 29 April 1951) was an Austrian-British philosopher who worked primarily in logic, the philosophy of mathematics, the philosophy of mind, and the philosophy of language. He is considere ...

’s ''

Philosophical Investigations ''Philosophical Investigations'' (german: Philosophische Untersuchungen) is a work by the philosopher Ludwig Wittgenstein, published posthumously in 1953. ''Philosophical Investigations'' is divided into two parts, consisting of what Wittgens ...

.''

Critical reception

''The Rose Has Teeth in the Mouth of a Beast'' received positive reviews from music critics. Review aggregator website

Metacritic Metacritic is a website that review aggregator, aggregates reviews of films, TV shows, music albums, video games and formerly, books. For each product, the scores from each review are averaged (a weighted arithmetic mean, weighted average). M ...

gives it a score of 81 out of 100 based on 22 critics, indicating "universal acclaim." Brandon Stosuy, writing for ''

Pitchfork A pitchfork (also a hay fork) is an agricultural tool with a long handle and two to five tines used to lift and pitch or throw loose material, such as hay, straw, manure, or leaves. The term is also applied colloquially, but inaccurately, to th ...

'', wrote in a positive review that "there are a few moments when the concept's cooler than the result, but in general ''The Rose Has Teeths experiments result in frenetic dance tracks doubling as reading lists." Jonathan Keefe, writing for ''

Slant Magazine ''Slant Magazine'' is an American online publication that features reviews of movies, music, TV, DVDs, theater, and video games, as well as interviews with actors, directors, and musicians. The site covers various film festivals like the New York ...

'', called the album "endlessly fascinating" but concluded that "even armed with a cheat sheet from

Wikipedia Wikipedia is a multilingual free online encyclopedia written and maintained by a community of volunteers, known as Wikipedians, through open collaboration and using a wiki-based editing system. Wikipedia is the largest and most-read refer ...

and a desire to figure out the significance of every last hair clipper and gunshot, the album never engages as anything more than an academic exercise." ''Pitchfork'' placed it at number 47 on the "Top 50 Albums of 2006" list.

Track listing

Charts

References

External links

* {{DEFAULTSORT:Rose Has Teeth in the Mouth of a Beast, The 2006 albums Cultural depictions of Valerie Solanas Matmos albums Matador Records albums Musique concrète albums LGBT-related albums