Miss Piggy Lunchbox

Kid Million’s Heaven Smiles On Every Bastard is pretty much the definition of “solid.” Nearly every one of these 13 tracks is enjoyable, yet moments of transcendence are fleeting. Every once in a while, the band reaches back for a little bit more and achieves a brief moment of absolutely glory looking out from the mountaintop, but every time the middling production values here knock them down a peg pretty quickly.

The aesthetic is rock that’s raw, bluesy, loose, sloppy, and raunchy. The singer has a dusty voice filled with character that’s often out of tune (but rarely annoyingly so). That’s a valid aesthetic (even if it’s overkill on the slow, pensive “The Prince”), and those aren’t the production values I’m talking about. Rather, what keeps this good record from reaching to greatness is a thin sound registering at about the same, fully compressed amplitude from start to finish. The bass is smooth and palpable, but there’s hardly any high end to speak of. In short, it stays in its steady, solid pocket, rarely rising to the point of having enough dynamism to be mixers.

Still, these are great songs, especially “Skinner Box,” “Parachute,” and my favorite, “Unwanted Toy,” even if the production effort is such that you have to go to them rather than be shaken awake by them. Heaven Smiles On Every Bastard was definitely meant to be listened to loud.

Rating:

Mixers: “Skinner Box,” “Parachute”
Non-keeper: “The Prince”
Filed Between: Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan (Greatest Hits – Volume 2) and Kid606 (Down With The Scene)

It’s back in time for Jump, Little Children’s 1995 debut, a collection of demos recorded around the South and compiled for release here. It’s impossible to listen to this and pretend I don’t know what’s coming three years and two releases later on the five-lunchbox Magazine, so I won’t even try.

This release is way more hippie and way less rawk and experimental than their later releases. In the mid-90’s, the band was definitely in a Birkenstock, granola phase as they’re essentially Rusted Root with worse production values. By the late 90’s, their range of emotional expressiveness had increased dramatically…you have to wonder if they were dumped by a chick in the meantime.

Lead vocalist Jay Clifford’s voice, such a distinctive sound on Magazine and Vertigo, here displays features of what it would be, but is still developing as well. It’s weaker here, and lacks a gritty sexiness it has on later releases.

Parts of this are pretty good, but it has gaping holes as well. “Lamplight” is five minutes long and becomes boring in about the first 25 seconds. “My Heart Is On The Ocean” features some awful lyrics: “The ship is sailing as the ships they do sail.” It all adds up to about a three-lunchbox CD, but I can’t quite decide if I would say the same thing if I hadn’t already heard their later work. Like I said, it’s hard to separate what I know will happen.

But then they go ahead and make up my mind for me by tacking on a “bonus” track after the pretty good “Opium,” which is just them talking about dumb s**t with an inanity previously thought to only exist in conversations of college freshmen. And, really, that kind of solipsism can’t go unpunished.

Rating:

Mixers: none
Keepers: “Someone’s In The Kitchen,” “Smiling Down,” “Quiet,” “My Heart Is On The Ocean”
Filed Between: Judgment Night Soundtrack and Magazine

I love the number 11.  It’s awesome.  Did you know the first five powers of 11 are palindromes?  Like I said, awesome.

More fun facts about 11 (though some of them are demonstrably false).

What a difference a year makes: this CD is a vast improvement over Mugison’s Ipecac debut.

Little Trip is a film score to a movie called Little Trip To Heaven, which I’m guessing is named after the Tom Waits song of the same name that is covered on this album. The cover features rusted out cars in front of broken down homes and barren trees against a cloudy, purple sky, and it basically sounds like the score to a film heavy on those elements.

It’s dark, melancholy, and brooding. It’s heavily instrumental, featuring sparse piano, saxes, Lovage-esque shimmering synthesized strings, and some steel guit, all moving with a slow, smoky groove As a film score, it doesn’t always make sense without the programmatic aspect of the visuals, like when it suddenly shifts from soft to loud for seemingly no reason. So it’s more of an interesting thing than a relaxing, enjoyable sort of thing, but I can dig that.

If I were to judge it on pure enjoyability, it’s a 3.5-lunchbox CD. That’s the criteria I use to decide what gets kept on my DMP. But if I’m to judge it on its merits as a film score and its function as art music, it’s definitely four lunchboxes.

Rating:

Mixers: “Go Blind,” “Watchdog”
Keepers: “Little Trip To Heaven,” “Mugicone,” “Piano For Tombstones,” “Mugicone Part 2,” “Sammi & Kjartan,” “Murr Murr v 2”
Filed Between: Mugison’s Mugimama! Is This Monkeymusic? and Murphy’s Law (Dedicated)

This might be enough to make me get Showtime.  EW reports:

Rick Springfield has signed on to play himself in four episodes of Californication….

Producers of the Showtime dramedy put out a casting call looking for “an actor who experienced huge fame in the 80’s to play themselves as a now down-on his-luck-ex-celebrity waiting tables to get by.”

Props to Springfield for…being down with the “tasteful nudity” and “simulated sex” that I’m told the role requires.

Can’t wait ’till he goes hardcore.

Is your computer screen dirty? Get the whole thing cleaned here.

H/T My Baby.

I’m all for life/
Until the bastard’s born/
After that/
He’s out on his own/
And if he does crime/
Trying to survive/
I’ll make damn sure/
He gets electrified/
Save the baby/
Kill the doctor/
…
I kill for you/
Little baby Jesus

- Mudhoney, “F.D.K. (Fearless Doctor Killers)”