Miss Piggy Lunchbox

I can’t think of a better CD to have popped into my CD player on my birthday a few days ago. I still have clear memories of sitting on the floor for something like my eighth birthday and unwrapping a new walkman and my first cassette, Springfield’s Working Class Dog, which I think had been recommended by the older neighbor kid, or maybe Mom knew I liked “Jessie’s Girl” from the radio or something. Regardless, over the next 26 years Rick Springfield has maintained his position at or near the top of my favorite musicians and this year’s Venus In Overdrive is probably his best album since the Holy Trinity of Rick (Working Class Dog, Success Hasn’t Spoiled Me Yet, and Living In Oz).

You roll your eyes and humor me, but Springfield’s songwriting brilliance is one of the best kept secrets in rock. You dismiss him as a pretty boy, one-hit wonder with “Jessie’s Girl” plus some time on General Hospital, but he had two more top 20 hits from Working Class Girl alone, one of which I heard blaring two weeks ago at a UW 5k I ran. He also had three top 40 hits from each of his next two albums (see the Holy Trinity of Rick), including the number two “Don’t Talk To Strangers.” He’d continue charting in the top 25 into the late 80’s on his next three albums, including scoring a number five with “Love Somebody” from the Hard To Hold soundtrack. His critical acclaim never quite matched his popularity, but appearing on the cover of Tiger Beat, or whatever, tends to have that effect. But, yeah, Springfield’s a total stud and it’s no accident he’s still putting out great music.

And I’ll be one of the first to say that one of his first albums after his near-decade hiatus, 1999’s Karma, was acceptable but pretty weak. I didn’t even get his next two albums, but given how incredible Venus In Overdrive is, I’m going to have to go back and check them out.

The album begins with an intentional nod to “Jessie’s Girl,” then spends the next 40 minutes forging another brilliant chapter in this 59-year-old’s(!) history. These are all brand new songs, some of them mixed by Matt Wallace who produced two of the greatest albums in rock’s history, Faith No More’s The Real Thing and Angel Dust, that stand equally with the greats in Springfield’s canon. Unlike too many aging musicians, Springfield stays with what he does so well. These are all new, fresh songs, but God, nobody else is so masterful with some power chords, a catchy melody, and a veneer of keys over a driving, clean guitar sound. For a few days I was eleven years old again, playing air guitar in front of 15,000 screaming fans just behind the mirror.

(Election obsession side note: Also making me feel young again was this adorable birthday card from my 80-something Republican aunt from Iowa whose message inside was brimming with comforting confidence that Obama was going to fix everything soon. Hold me while I suck my thumb and fall asleep.)

It’s not all 1982 all over again, and 2008 Springfield isn’t some caricature of what he once was. His life stage is apparent in his lyrical content and in the liner notes, which feature page after page of pictures of him with his fans. Most of his fans don’t look like me…check it out. He gets political, anxious to throw out the whole system, on “Mr. PC,” and no fewer than four of these songs are about death, in particular that of Sahara Aldridge, a 13-year-old fan who succumbed to a battle with brain cancer last November.

Of course, it’s never been all about unrequited love. Springfield’s been dealing with death, particularly that of his father’s in 1981, in his lyrics prominently ever since Success Hasn’t Spoiled Me Yet. As a survivor of depression and a 30-year veteran of a career in rock-and-roll, though, his explorations of the issue have a more peaceful, faithful, upward-looking feel then they did before.

So yeah, I have a very strong identification with Rick Springfield, and there’s a part of me that feels like I am him in a way. It’s always been a rewarding relationship, and I can’t even tell you how excited I am for his recent success in delivering one of the best albums of the year.

Update: “Time Stand Still” is the best song ever.

Rating:

Mixers: “What’s Victoria’s Secret?,” “I’ll Miss That Someday,” “Venus In Overdrive,” “One Passenger,” “Time Stand Still,” “Mr. PC”
Keepers: everything else
Filed Between: Springfield’s Backtracks and Bruce Springsteen (Greetings From Asbury Park, N.J.)

As a drummer, there’s no arguing with Zach Hill’s proficiency, brutal accuracy, and rhythmic creativity. As a compelling composer, though, Hill still has a way to go.

To be fair, Hill doesn’t seem to be trying to write for anybody other than the tiny subset of the population that is looking for the audio equivalent of a cavalcade of haunted house strobe lights, so it’s hard to fault him when he successfully achieves that sound. That sound, in fact, is some of the most extreme music in existence. Curse Of The Golden Vampire is infamous with My Baby and her family for being the most abrasive sound put on record, but this is basically just the same thing minus the metal guitar sound and with tinny, futuristic vocal sounds instead of growling.

The rhythms are insane, or at least cause insanity. I think it would be a great practical joke to play this in a college music rhythm transcription exercise with the same number or repetitions, the same length of pauses, and all the solemnity you would for any similar exercise using Mozart or Brahms. It’s almost hard to believe that somebody either wrote this or performed it, but Hill here does both. What’s more, despite the chaotic sound of the album, attentive listening to any given part will reveal an intricate structure creating the seeming disarray of sound.

And a lot of the time it works. I’m a big fan of the three mixers below. “Stoic Logic” is probably my fave track on these two-discs (the second of which contains only the 32-minute “Necromancer”), with its more traditional rock structure and Hill’s brief swap of wacky for aggressive, ferocious drums.

On the other hand, there’s more than half of this that I don’t need to hear again. “Uhuru” is a nearly 9:00 drum solo that you might have gotten at a Mötley Crüe concert with some weird sounds added in, but with its hollow, aboriginal drum sound you get the feeling Hill thinks its his most out there one. Only if out there equals boring.

If I have one complaint that persists throughout, it’s that there’s a general thinness to the sound here. Superficially, it doesn’t seem like that could be the case, with layers and layers of scattered, rapid-fire rhythms flying past you like lasers in a space age riot. However, one of the most abrasive elements of this album is that it spends too much time in the upper-middle range of the audible frequency spectrum, so it’s like three different Pats from Saturday Night Live are simultaneously talking to you for 90 minutes. Meanwhile, the very little bass there is to speak of isn’t audible enough to make itself felt. You have to go searching for it, which all adds up to an unsatisfying experience.

Astrological Straits tickles my interesting bone, and I’m intrigued to review more of Hill’s work on Ipecac when I get to the their releases by the bands Hella and Goon Moon. But if Hill spent more time in the middle ground between crazy and boring that he finds on his mixers, I would get a lot more legitimate pleasure out of listening to him.

Rating:

Mixers: “Dark Art,” “Stoic Logic,” “Momentum”
Keepers: “Toll Road,” “Keep Calm And Carry On,” “Tick On,” “Astrological Straits”
Filed Between: HFL 4 – KISW, Rock 99.9 FM and Hole (Live Through This)

[Most of these tracks actually sound pretty good on my good stereo, but awful on the mediocre one we have lying around and on my DMP, which is, of course, how most people listen to these things, as opposed to on high-end equipment like they are overflowing with at the money-flush KEXP, so everything here stands, and in fact is probably worse because I f**king hate elite audio engineers who only know how to make things sound good on their high-end equipment. – Ed.]

It’s like, if everything sucked, that’s this album. What a let down from the solid release from last year. Kevin Suggs, who so earned my respect with his work on that album, is back for most of these tracks, still playing with fiery high levels, but now he gets burned with horrible sound up and down the the track listing. Combine that with mediocre performances of middling songs and you get a CD that would have been 1.5 lunchboxes if it weren’t for its strong close.

Even a lot of the keepers are barely hanging on. Pela’s “Lost To The Lonesome” is fine, but unspectacular, and leads off the album with the peaking and static problems that will plague the album almost to its finish.

The two worst-sounding tracks are “A-Punk” by Vampire Weekend (recorded by James Nixon) and “We’ll Make A Lover Out Of You” by Les Savy Fav (done by Suggs). Both are great songs, but are basically unlistenable with this kind of sound quality. I’m not being picky, either; you would notice that these sound completely awful.

Sometimes the sound isn’t completely plagued by high levels, but just a general thinness, which is very un-Suggs. I’m not sure I would have been inspired to buy Yeasayer’s album based on this version of “2080,” and “Can’t Say No” by The Helio Sequence is a borderline keeper that ends up on the right side of the border more for my appreciation of their SP20 set than for this actual recording.

There are a few tracks that are fine, but not quite keep-able, particularly with the sound problems. “I Never Thought I Could Feel This Way For A Boy” by the Belle & Sebastian-influenced The Scotland Yard Gospel Choir and The National’s “Start A War” fit into this category. Elsewhere we have good bands doing completely unremarkable songs, like “Let Them Knock” by Sharon Jones & The Dap-Kings, which has some great parts, but is so uncatchy that I couldn’t hum the chorus on demand for you, and I just listened to it a minute before writing this sentence. Why British Sea Power even bother with “Down On The Ground,” and, more generally, why bands would select unremarkable songs for a radio performance, is beyond me.

The album is best on the stripped-down tracks, when performers rely more on acoustic than electric instruments. This is the case for Angelique Kidjo’s “Salala,” which adds one of the two refreshing non-indie rock tracks to the 20 total on the album (the only other being “Let Them Knock”), Elbow’s “Grounds For Divorce,” and the final three tracks, which round out the mix CD candidates. The tension-filled-represion of the build in the horns on the otherwise quiet “Cruel” by Calexico is my favorite moment on the disc. It’s these exposed performances that benefit the most (or at all) from Suggs’ to-the-limits recording style with a close-up feel that is exactly what an album like this should be going for.

Last year it was Cloud Cult doing Bob Dylan, and this year the Minnesota connection is maintained with Atmosphere’s “Guarantees.” I like Atmosphere, and this is a good track, though the chorus is clunky in its clichedness, and the lyrics about smacking his kid (and how that would make others regard him as a monster) make me uncomfortable in about seven different ways.

Finally, the last category of songs are those that are just plain awful. !!!’s “Yadnus” is about as good as their name, maybe a little better. The Raveonettes are bad rip-offs of Jesus & Mary Chain (who were bad enough to start with) and the cool, noisy guitar “solo” of “Aly, Walk With Me” can’t mask its simpleton bassline and overall dullness. I’ve never understood the appeal of The Hold Steady, whose MSP connection is revealed in the lyrics of “Your Little Hoodrat Friend” with mentions of Osseo, Stillwater, the Mississippi River, and City Center, and they do nothing here to demonstrate to me why they are so popular.

I usually hope to get 50-80% of a comp CD kept. At 45%, this album is definitely a failure on that account. KEXP didn’t pump this CD as heavily as they did last year’s, and I can’t help but think even they knew they had a stinker on their hands. Maybe if they weren’t paying six figures to John in the Morning, a horribly-annoying DJ, as well as for his residence in New York City, they could have focused more on making their flagship release listenable on 98% of listening devices.

Rating:

Mixers: “Salala” (Angelique Kidjo), “Cruel” (Calexico), “Red Balloons” (Carter Tanton), “Going To A Town” (Rufus Wainwright)
Keepers: “Lost To The Lonesome” (Pela), “Can’t Say No” (The Helio Sequence), “Grounds For Divorce” (Elbow), “Guarantees” (Atmosphere), “Lion’s Mouth” (Arthur & Yu)
Filed Between: Live At KEXP, Volume Three and Live at Moe 1

One of my friend Karl’s bands released a new album this year. As you know, it’s MPL policy not to review friends’ CDs, but you should get this.

Mixers: “Fate Won’t Wait”
Non-keepers: “All That I Am,” “On The Bus,” “Fall In Love Again”
Filed Between: Terramara’s Four Blocks From Hennepin and Tesla (The Great Radio Controversy)

It’s been a long time coming, but now that I’ve added Nude With Boots, released only two weeks ago, a mere nanosecond in MPL time, my Melvins collection is as updated as it’s been since before we entered our “poor period” and signed over our firstborn to My Baby’s business school. Of their studio albums, I’m basically just missing the ones with Jello Biafra (so maybe I won’t buy anything they do). In fact, I had a signed copy of this disc a day before it was even available in stores, which left me feeling kind of super-complete.

A quick diversion, though, because this is critical. All albums listened to primarily on sunny days are going to get the shaft around here. You see, when it’s sunny, I sit upstairs by the windows to increase my happiness, and listen on my iPod. When it’s not, I work downstairs in my office, in front of my stereo. Lots of music sounds like crap on my iPod, partially because it doesn’t allow a custom EQ setting. Dear Apple, screw you.

So The Black Keys got rewritten at the last minute, and Jawbox sounded a ton better right before it got posted, but since I’d already re-written one review last week I couldn’t bring myself to do another. Anyway, I’m writing this now because Nude With Boots was mostly listened to on a cloudy morning, but sounds much worse now on a sunny afternoon.

That may just mean Melvins sound better on cloudy days, and that makes sense for a band born in the dreary darkness of Aberdeen, WA. For the last few years, though, they have been sounding more and more like a band from their current home in sunny California. They’ve been playing less slow, sludgy, gloom and instead concentrating on more upbeat, straight, but no less heavy, metal with riffs that most listeners can easily grasp on to.

That trend continues with Nude With Boots, another very accessible album, at least relative to most Melvins material. There’s still sludge (“Dog Island,” “It Tastes Better Than The Truth”) and noisy sound-fests (“Flush,” “It Tastes Better Than The Truth”). For the most part, though, everything sounds a little brighter and more orthodox. For one track they even do a cover of the 13th century Latin hymn “Dies Irae” (“Dies Iraea”), though of course that hardly sounds familiar or comfortable to 21st century ears.

Instead, for their current release, Melvins seem content to screw with your mind with tricky rhythms. You won’t notice it at first, but on closer listen, “Suicide In Progress,” which might be the best song on here, will reveal some very confusing beats. I think part of it might be in 17. And on “The Smiling Cobra,” which gives “Suicide In Progress” a run for the Nude With Boots best song crown, I even have trouble finding beat one in parts, and it might not even be there…they may have discarded the idea of measures altogether, something that they tended to do early in their career as well.

This is a very good, immensely enjoyable album from start to finish, though there’s nothing here that’s quite as arresting as the best songs from A Senile Animal. Additionally, it might just be a bit too straight in parts. “The Stupid Creep” is awfully close to plain vanilla 1990 tough-guy, no-passion metal, as is the pre-vocal part of “Nude With Boots.” There’s some cognitive dissonance that goes along with saying Melvins are too accessible, and, given their track record I can’t believe that label will stick.

Melvins has been around for 24 years now. The world has hardly noticed, but those who have been paying attention stand in awe at one of the most storied careers in musical history. King Buzzo seems to me to be crazy incisive about just about everything, including his musical legacy:

“There are lots of makeshift wonders, seven in the world/Five of them will not be noticed and three will not be heard,” he sings on “Suicide In Progress.” While you’re working out that math, Melvins is touring the world, creating unseen, unheard wonders.

Rating:

Mixers: “The Kicking Machine,” “Suicide In Progress,” “The Smiling Cobra,” “Nude With Boots,” “The Savage Hippy”
Non-keepers: “Flush,” “The Stupid Creep”
Filed Between: The Making Love Demos and Melvins+Lustmord (Pigs Of The Roman Empire)

I wrote this damned review two days ago, but now it’s yesterday, and after being persuaded by some unseen force to give it one last spin on my stereo, I’m forced to rewrite the vast bulk of it. At least it’s because I think it’s a lot better than I did before. Anyway, I just can’t bring myself to trash the old stuff completely, so, along with adding some material, I’m just going to do the strikethrough thing, and you can treat it as a window into the process of getting to know this album. Or whatever.  I kept some of the old stuff, too, so if some of the non-strikethrough stuff seems to be a little poorly composed or to lack cohesion, that’s why.

Attack & Release, released earlier this year by The Black Keys, was produced by Danger Mouse. I’m not sure exactly what meaning is supposed to be conveyed by that, but it is apparently the law that it has to be mentioned in every review of this album, so I figured I’d just get it out of the way. If I’m going to be a music critic, I have to just ape the press release, right?

The Black Keys are some prolofos (prolific mofos), putting out an additional four albums since their 2002 debut, The Big Come Up. I have and love 2003’s Thickfreakness, and I think maybe the band should be a little less prolific because a lot of the pow has disappeared in the last five years. Attack & Release is still really good, but with more emphasis on the slow repetitive nature of the blues and less on their formerly driving rock, the shine is off this blues-rock duo from Akron a bit. Attack & Release is named, I believe, for the strong dichotomy on the album of super-charged, hard-driving rockers against slow, repetitive, blues-y numbers.

The last five years have also formed The Black Keys into a more polished-sounding, less lo-fi band. That’s not necessarily unexpected, as more bands clean up their sound over time, but it is surprising considering this was recorded on a homemade console. Maybe the cleaner sound is the result of Danger Mouse’s production and you all understood that in the first sentence of the review. Maybe the code all reviewers write in is really clear to everybody but me. Regardless, it sounds absolutely amazing on my stereo. It still sounds gritty, but now instead of sounding like they’re playing to their cats in their living room, it sounds like they’re captivating Wembley Stadium.

In what has to be a first, The Black Keys put four of the five best songs at the very end of this record. They also put the two very best songs and the single best song on the record at the very end. It sounds even weirder to listen to than it does to hear about. After decisively determining, through extensive examples at SP20 this last weekend, that the best way to construct a 40-minute live set is to build the entire time, with the possible exception of putting in a really strong opening song (the third mixer, “All You Ever Wanted,” is the opener here), I can’t help but wonder if they’re planning to play this album (clocking in at just under 40 minutes…I knew it) straight though live some time, because that set up certainly doesn’t work on disc as well as it does live.

I don’t think this set up is an accident either. To transition from the “meh” first half to the “yeah” second half of this album, they put the two tracks “Remember When (Side A)” and “Remember When (Side B)” right in the middle. The former fits in with those in front of it as a slow, moody, bluesy sleeper, and the latter picks up the pace and the punch on the drums quite a bit to prepare you for the excellent second half. I am newly loving the first single, “Strange Times,” and “Lies,” and newly really-liking everything else.

I don’t know…this is probably a four-lunchbox CD if I hadn’t heard Thickfreakness, but knowing how much better their output was five years ago, I’m tempted to give it three-and-a-half. But that’s not really fair. It is produced by Danger Mouse, after all. I really like this album. It is a no-brainer at four lunchboxes.

Rating:

Mixers: “All You Ever Wanted,” “Oceans And Streams,” “Things Ain’t Like They Used To Be”
Keepers: everything else
Filed Between: Thickfreakeness and Black Sabbath (Black Sabbath)

This is a perfect (or very nearly so) pop album. With unbelievably catchy melodies, the perfection of that slightly distorted sound all the kids are trying to get right these days, world music influences, and songs that move naturally from one awesome riff to the next, methodically building to a jumping-up-and-down-in-ecstasy climax, this is the album that The Beatles would make in 2008.

At least half of these 11 songs feature melodies that are so damned catchy you can’t believe nobody’s written them yet. Hearing new songs like that is probably the best musical experience you can have at age 33, because it reaffirms the power of music and how much untapped potential is still out there. I’m sure I’ll listen to twelve mediocre albums in a row at some point in the future and lose all faith in humankind’s ability to write a hook again, but for now the possibilities are endless and I can’t even see the horizon.

Wikipedia says the band is influenced by African popular music, and that’s there in the drums, but it doesn’t get in the way of perfectly accessible Western pop songs. I also hear some Jamaican reggae and Latino influences, too. It’s all so easy, though, with absolutely no pretension. So even if world music scares you, you’ll be able to dig on this, and you get the burnishing of your world music cred for free. And remember, it’s basically a modern The Beatles, so what’s to be afraid of?

Vampire Weekend wouldn’t really be a band attending Columbia if there weren’t some pretension, though, and they chose to insert it in the lyrics. Words and phrases like Dharamsala, Madras, Jackson Crowther, kefir, and keffiyah (sic), dowdy, and rickshaw appear every other verse. They fit, though. They’re not forced in there, and you almost get the feeling that they really do talk like this. Who knows, maybe I’m just swept up in the dreamy pop tunes.

“The Kids Don’t Stand A Chance” ends the album and, while okay, is entirely unnecessary, and weakens the album to a notch below perfect. Update: Screw it, this is a five lunchbox CD.  Criticizing this album for its last track is like criticizing Scarlett Johansson for her original nose.  Sure, it’s not what, taken alone, is traditionally regarded as what it should look/sound like, but it makes it even more appealing that there’s some humanity amid the outrageous perfection.  Johansson’s a perfect ten and this is a perfect five.  </Update> “Walcott” is the best song ever, but on a weaker album “Oxford Comma,” “Campus,” and “I Stand Corrected” all could have won the same title. So start with those, but for the love of God start now.

Rating:

Mixers: “Oxford Comma,” “A-Punk,” “Campus,” “I Stand Corrected,” “Walcott”
Keepers: everything else
Filed Between: Steve Vai (Passion And Warfare) and Van Halen (1984)

Well here’s the holy trinity of getting the short shrift. Fleet Foxes has the honor of being the album I review while being severely jetlagged. But I’ve listened to it five times, and rules are rules, so it’s gotta be written up.

I could probably listen to it fifty times, though, and still not be much closer to absorbing it. Fleet Foxes has a dense, rich sound topped off with male falsetto harmonies (think Beach Boys if they grew up in Seattle), instrumentation filled with tambourines and pan-flute-y things that recall “Stairway To Heaven,” and song structures that swell and ebb (except when they don’t) to merge disparate styles into one song.

It’s a new, fresh sound that, yeah, has influences, but is still unique. And I like it, but it’s a little tough to access, mostly because the vocals are mixed a bit too loud. This is quiet, reflective music, but they are really pushing the levels to the point where you’re kind of uncomfortable that lead singer Robin Pecknold is sitting in your lap. And when you turn down the volume to push him over to the next chair, then it’s tough to get what the rest of the band is doing, which, as I mentioned, is kind of complex, so you’d like to be able to hear it.

There isn’t a single song on here I find flawless, but I like most of them as their strong sections outweigh the parts that don’t sit well. At its best, this is a four lunchbox disc, but I couldn’t decide between that or three-and-a-half, so the awkward mixing was the tiebreaker.

Rating:

Mixers: “Ragged Wood,” “Quiet Houses,” “Meadowlarks”
Non-keepers: “Heard Them Stirring,” “Oliver James”
Filed Between: Flamenco de Carlos Saura and Flight of the Conchords (Flight of the Conchords)

Oooh, when the sun comes up
And the shimmering light is just too much
That’s when you know you’ve had enough…
There’s no word for how you feel
Even in German

- Mudhoney, “And The Shimmering Light”

Yep, those are the lyrics of a Seattle band, emotions dulled into simultaneous submission and a barely-contained impotent rage by the omnipresent clouds. This was recorded last September, so I don’t know how they could have predicted that when this was released this spring it would be during the most miserable spring ever, but they do seem to have done just that. Heck, I think the cover of the CD is the most color I’ve seen since August. I’m going to start getting my weather forecasts from Mudhoney from now on.

Mudhoney is proof that you don’t have to sound like crap to sound like you sound like crap. Their original recipe was indeed to sound like they sounded like crap by sounding like they sounded like crap. But for the last fifty years they’ve shown you can sound awesome and sound like crap at the same time. Everything’s dirty and nasty with them, but with absolute clarity, like their heavily-distorted but pristinely-recordedsongs, or the drum intro to “The Open Mind” which sounds lazy and sloppy, but is really a very complex beat.

They’re still nasty and straight-forward in their lyrics, too. There’s nothing quite as incendiary as their 1995 attack on anti-choice abortion clinic bombers, “F.D.K. (Fearless Doctor Killers),” but you still have to love their current polemic against religious fundamentalists in “The Open Mind”: “The open mind is an empty mind/So I keep mind closed.”

What’s changed, however, is Mark Arm’s voice, which doesn’t carry quite the strength that it once did. He still reaches for that nasally, sneering howl, that is so distinctively his, but there are moments (parts of the title track, for example), where he can’t quite get there. It still sounds awesome and Mudhoney newcomers won’t notice it, but in comparison to his past work it falls a bit short.

He still goes for it though, no compromises for him. From the opening chords of their first single, “Touch Me I’m Sick,” there was never any room for subtlety in Mudhoney’s world, and there still isn’t. They’ve still got it (“Get it out of my face”).

Rating:

Mixers: “I’m Now,” “And The Shimmering Light,” “The Open Mind,” “Tales Of Terror”
Non-keepers: “We Are Rising,” “New Meaning”
Filed Between: Mudhoney’s March To Fuzz – Best Of And Rarities… and Murphy’s Law (Dedicated)

Two-and-a-half years ago, when reviewing Permission To Land by The Darkness, I said:

I have been giving some thought lately to what it is about comedic music that relegates it to a lower position on the artistic hierarchy than music whose intentions are sincere. Comedy has a firm entrenchment in theater, film, dance, visual arts, and literature, but for some reason it’s considered the weird stepchild in music. I love “Weird Al” Yankovic (we share a birthday), Spinal Tap, and now The Darkness, but listening to parody music for any purpose besides giggling with friends seems kinda weird. And I can’t figure out why.

Here’s the deal. The comedic genre of music isn’t music, as much as it’s comedy. Of course it is music, and to say otherwise is ridiculous. However, in non-comedic music the entire meaning of the gesture is in the music itself, whereas in comedic music the music is a tool, a prop if you will, that serves the comedic intent. In my mind, they are different art forms. It may be a bold claim, and you could probably write a thesis about it, but I feel reconciled about it finally.

I also feel relieved because now I don’t feel like I have to review these comedic music CDs. I would never think twice about reviewing (or owning, for that matter) a spoken-word comedy CD. It doesn’t stand up to repeated listens in the same way music does. So why should I review a comedy CD that consists of music? Comedy’s not my bag. I like to laugh, sure, but I don’t fancy myself as having any particular insight into funny.

So whether it’s singing a lounge tune in first-year French or making a play on censored rap songs by cutting out every other word, Flight of the Conchords is absolutely hilarious. You’ll find yourself memorizing sections so that you can repeat them with your friends like you did with Napoleon Dynamite. Like, say, “She’s so hot she’s making me sexist,” from “Boom.”

I will add that the music is well done and serves the jokes well. The songs are all faithful to the genre they ape, and the lyrics are so witty that you sometimes wonder if segments of these tunes really could have been successful as straight-up musical numbers. In the hilariously named “Hiphopopotamus vs. Rhymenoceros (feat. Rhymenoceros and the Hiphopopotamus),” for example, there’s a bit where Jemaine introduces his character with the lyrics, “They call me the hiphopopotamus/My lyrics are bottomless/…,” only to be left speechless while you’re left laughing at how nothing rhymes with “hippopotamus.” And just as you’re enjoying the next round of jokes, he comes back and explodes in a flurry of lyrics that really do (nearly) rhyme with hippopotamus done in a flow that many rappers on the radio today would kill for:

They call me the hiphopopotamus
Flows that glow like phosphorous
Poppin’ off the top of this esophagus
Rockin’ this metropolis

Smart, funny s**t that tickles your cranium just right with some good tunes to back everything up. Not a bad way to spend forty-four minutes, but I’m not sure how often I want to spend those minutes that way.

Rating:

Mixers: “Hiphopopotamus vs. Rhymenoceros (feat. Rhymenoceros and the Hiphopopotamus),” “Think About It,” “Mutha’uckas”
Non-keepers: “Ladies Of The World,” “The Prince Of Parties,” “Leggy Blonde,” “A Kiss Is Not A Contract,” “Au Revoir”
Filed Between: Flamenco de Carlos Saura and The Folkscene Collection