Big Orange Crayonmusical thingsElectramone Proud Washroom Recordings The first thought that popped into my head when I first played this CD was "Frank Black". Perhaps a slightly inebriated Frank Black, but it reminded me of him nonetheless. That's how the whole album still strikes me: the afforementioned legend after a rough party and on an alt-country kick. Normally I would consider such a thing unpleasant, but it actually works pretty well here. The record has the slimy feel of a person waking up at one in the afternoon on a sunday morning in an unfamiliar room in a pool of unmentionable filth, but in a suprisingly appealing way. The vocals, the instrumentals, all of it is grimy and filthy and I know that sometimes you get the urge to listen to music like that. It's as honest as it is creepy. I would call the music a sordid mixture of alt-country and punk rock attitudes, with Pixies-style rock riding underneath it (I did say it remided me of Frank Black, after all). The title track is pretty much the source of the imagery in the first paragraph, so there's that and other standouts are the sneering "Big Truck" and the brutally honest "Naked and High". So this album is definitely worth listening to, just as long as you don't mind feeling a bit unclean for a while after listening. Total score: 351 out of 394 |