The Phenomenological Boys - Melody, Melody, Melody & More Melody
If this album were a stage-show, it would run at that theatre-in-the-radiator in Eraserhead
Wrong. Wrong and broken. That's pretty much how you could describe Melody, Melody, Melody & More Melody. It starts with wonky cheese-tones drifting over a combination Geiger-counter/toy jackhammer backbeat, on top of which is layered some '50s-stylee female crooning - and that's just the first 51 seconds. The weirdness continues unabated from there on in.
It's difficult to nail down what this album is all about. It's basically a number of songs, interspersed with varying Interlude tracks, culled from random sources - including Prince Charles's favorite, The Goon Show, if you're a trainspotter - in what can only be described as something that would, if it were a stage-show, only be run at that theatre-in-the-radiator in Eraserhead.
It's that cracked.
There is, however, a lot of brilliance here. For sheer heartbreaking genius, you'll find it hard to go past Will There Be Yodeling In Heaven?, a tune of love, longing, and a chemical spill on I-94. It starts off with standard, dreamy '50s croons, descends into a morass of percussive dings, detuned nasal yodeling and a general feeling of seasickness, before ending with a great Western Swing-style sign-off. The upbeat feel is common to everything here - but it's certainly not what the disc is about.
To be honest, Melody, Melody, Melody & More Melody isn't as saccharine as the genres it borrows from. It's not all nice. Let's Get Rid Of Richard, for example, is what would happen if the Powerpuff Girls had roles in Faster Pussycat, Kill, Kill! - a tale of a plan to kill an indie-worshipping loser who "sucks donkey cock" - although you might think that calling for HIV infection, and describing said indie-snooze as "a dried up old cooze", is a bit harsh. It is harsh; there's a line of narrative flowing through the disc that seems to have more in common with riot-grrl movements than the laid-back smooth that the Boys' musical moments seem to be mining. Indeed, there's some fairly cool invective ("he's got the smarts of a garden tool") levelled at another male -- over the top of some fantastic lava-lit low-key funk -- during He's So Dumb which makes you realize, early-on, that a vein of nastiness lies just below the surface of everything here. It's Lynchian, I suppose -- appearance versus reality comes into play a lot. Oh, and it features Everything's Got A Shade Of Green, the best surf/twist/chi-chi Gidget tune that ever escaped the '50s and namechecked Leonard Bernstein. What else could you want?
Chad Morgan once sang a song called So Nice In The Nuthouse. The Phenomenological Boys could well have been the inspiration for that atrocious ode: their world is fucking weird, but it's a cracked, enjoyable place. File alongside your Scurvy Pirates discs - there won't be many occasions when you'll play this, but it'll hit the spot every time you do.
I don't know what's in the water in Somerville, MA - where this gang of cut-and-pasting retrofreaks reside - but I want some.
This article originally appeared on splendidezine.com.
Wrong. Wrong and broken. That's pretty much how you could describe Melody, Melody, Melody & More Melody. It starts with wonky cheese-tones drifting over a combination Geiger-counter/toy jackhammer backbeat, on top of which is layered some '50s-stylee female crooning - and that's just the first 51 seconds. The weirdness continues unabated from there on in.It's difficult to nail down what this album is all about. It's basically a number of songs, interspersed with varying Interlude tracks, culled from random sources - including Prince Charles's favorite, The Goon Show, if you're a trainspotter - in what can only be described as something that would, if it were a stage-show, only be run at that theatre-in-the-radiator in Eraserhead.
It's that cracked.
There is, however, a lot of brilliance here. For sheer heartbreaking genius, you'll find it hard to go past Will There Be Yodeling In Heaven?, a tune of love, longing, and a chemical spill on I-94. It starts off with standard, dreamy '50s croons, descends into a morass of percussive dings, detuned nasal yodeling and a general feeling of seasickness, before ending with a great Western Swing-style sign-off. The upbeat feel is common to everything here - but it's certainly not what the disc is about.
To be honest, Melody, Melody, Melody & More Melody isn't as saccharine as the genres it borrows from. It's not all nice. Let's Get Rid Of Richard, for example, is what would happen if the Powerpuff Girls had roles in Faster Pussycat, Kill, Kill! - a tale of a plan to kill an indie-worshipping loser who "sucks donkey cock" - although you might think that calling for HIV infection, and describing said indie-snooze as "a dried up old cooze", is a bit harsh. It is harsh; there's a line of narrative flowing through the disc that seems to have more in common with riot-grrl movements than the laid-back smooth that the Boys' musical moments seem to be mining. Indeed, there's some fairly cool invective ("he's got the smarts of a garden tool") levelled at another male -- over the top of some fantastic lava-lit low-key funk -- during He's So Dumb which makes you realize, early-on, that a vein of nastiness lies just below the surface of everything here. It's Lynchian, I suppose -- appearance versus reality comes into play a lot. Oh, and it features Everything's Got A Shade Of Green, the best surf/twist/chi-chi Gidget tune that ever escaped the '50s and namechecked Leonard Bernstein. What else could you want?
Chad Morgan once sang a song called So Nice In The Nuthouse. The Phenomenological Boys could well have been the inspiration for that atrocious ode: their world is fucking weird, but it's a cracked, enjoyable place. File alongside your Scurvy Pirates discs - there won't be many occasions when you'll play this, but it'll hit the spot every time you do.
I don't know what's in the water in Somerville, MA - where this gang of cut-and-pasting retrofreaks reside - but I want some.
This article originally appeared on splendidezine.com.
Labels: album reviews
