This alternative rock act from the tobacco-smoking,
bourbon drinking, fried-chicken-famed Bluegrass State of Kentucky have always
had the potential to be complete and utter nutters, but they seem to have
squandered this potential.
I received a similar feeling of slight disappointment on their last record, Thankyou, happy birthday. The Jello-Biafra-style warbles and screams and the dark and visceral, Pixies-influenced instrumentation made the album feel absolutely and beautifully chaotic in parts. However, there seemed to be an equal amount of tracks that came across as boringly sane.
I received a similar feeling of slight disappointment on their last record, Thankyou, happy birthday. The Jello-Biafra-style warbles and screams and the dark and visceral, Pixies-influenced instrumentation made the album feel absolutely and beautifully chaotic in parts. However, there seemed to be an equal amount of tracks that came across as boringly sane.
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| Cage the nt elepha? |
Melophobia
suffers from the same amount of tedious sanity. The band have definitely
grown more musically varied, incorporating horns and falsetto vocals, but
amongst the mad moments (the piano freakout at the end of Its Just Forever comes to mind as well as the skippy moment in Spiderhead that made me think my
computer had crashed) there are parts of this record that just remain bland.
The last track, so forgettable I can’t remember its name, comes as a giant anti-climax
after the whacky screwball of a track, Teeth,
which features a zany sax solo and a bizarre spoken soliloquy. I know that for
some people the lighters-up ballads will be the highlights, but I prefer the
unhinged side to this band because personally it’s more interesting to me (probably
because I’m a little unhinged myself).
This album has its brilliant moments but it
could be made better if the group embraced the psycho-Mr. Bungle in them.
★★★☆☆
TRACK TASTER:
TRACK TASTER: