David Vélez - Comfort Food

A Closer Listen

Comfort Food may be one of the cruelest albums ever recorded.  First, David Vélez plants vegetable seeds, then takes care of the cute little babies (pictured on the cover) as they grow.  He feeds them, waters them and plays sine waves and harmonic tones to soothe them, like putting a musical mobile in a crib.  He is the only parent they will ever know.  Then, after lulling them into a false sense of security, he tiptoes into their room and instead of feeding them, slaughters them mercilessly!  And then (stop reading now, sensitive readers!), he cooks them and eats them!  And cruelty upon cruelty, he records the sounds of them being chopped, boiled and perhaps even fried alive!  Even worse, he calls this comfort food, but certainly not for their comfort, these poor vegetable Hansel and Gretels, no ~ but for his own.  David, haven’t you read The Light Eaters: How the Unseen World of Plant Intelligence Offers a New Understanding of Life on Earth?  Don’t you know that plants have feelings, and families, and that they communicate with each other and even respond to human touch?  You have the microphones; can’t you hear these little plants screaming?  How cold this betrayal!  It’s enough to make one want to eat only meat.

Perhaps it is not worth asking if these poor, defenseless beings were killed humanely, or if torture were involved.  Over the course of three tracks, we hear the sound of this vegetarian Lecter in his lair.  Here is the sound of “Nitrogen,” fattening them up before their turn in the pan.  Here are the sine waves, which trick them into letting down their guard.  The artist even captures the sound of earthworms moving through soil: creatures, it must be noted, that he spares, because they are not part of his palette.  The liner notes speak of “moral sensibilities.”  Moral?  What is moral about this?  Vélez freely admits that he gives his companions phosphorous and warmth.  He personifies them in cartoons.  (The beet wears a forced smile, while the tomatoes seem to know what’s coming.)

Which is crueler: the fact that the plants hear the sound of the torture garden: boiling water and cooking oil – or that they are forced to listen as their friends and neighbors are sliced, diced and devoured?  Jane Bennett writes, “we engage the questions of what to eat, how to get it, and when to stop.”  Stop, David, stop!  Have you no compassion for lesser beings?  No empathy for those whom you raised and comforted and serenaded?  How many must die for your comfort?  How can you call such mass annihilation “bliss?”  What kind of monster are you, that this brings you”joy?”

The terror grows as the album progresses.  Midway through “Phosphoros,” the boiling water becomes audible, and we remember that this is how Michael Myers dispatched one of his victims in “Halloween II.”  As the fryer is turned on, we recall “Jason Goes to Hell,” when the villain of “Friday the 13th” killed a man by shoving his face into boiling oil.  We begin to long for “Day of the Triffids” or the original “The Thing” or “Little Shop of Horrors,” in which these humble, lovable plants Have Had Enough and take it out on their human colonizers; or even “The Happening,” although we don’t recommend that movie at all, since watching it is its own form of torture.

Suffice it to say that if you can take the horror – if you have the stomach for this sort of thing, pun intended – then we recommend this album as we did the last album by The Vegetable Orchestra, who plays with their food before eating it.  Oh, the horror.  Oh, the humanity.  (Richard Allen)