Music Review of an Album That Doesn't Exist

[That's right, all fake, but you can try downloading it on Limewire if
you don't believe me.]

Band: Spent Our Twenties in T-Shirts
Album: "Dakron Fetish '86"
Label: Rough Trade/Matador

The 'Shirts return for a sophomore album featuring all the elements you
loved from their debut "...And That's Not a Bad Thing!" and so much
more. Gone, sadly, are the between-song karaoke covers, but in their
stead are some live recordings of lead singer Paul's
absurdist/performative take on spoken word poetry, along with more of
the same ridiculous staged photo galleries we've all come to love (fans
of their website know what I'm talking about-- have you ever seen a
stalk of corn mistreated in such a way?). Combing simplistic chord
progressions, hip-shaking MOOG baselines, frightfully motivating
melodies, and the usual shout-spoken literary vocals (if there's
nothing else these guys can do), you're in for another 64-minute
surprise, something akin to Pavement jamming on MSN Messenger with a
fifth of rye whiskey and a Casio SK-1.

"Samba Hoez Need to Know" opens things off with a low guttaral roar
from Paul before drummer Chris kicks into an impossibly complex
polyrhythm over what sounds like the sample of a mail truck delivering
mail in a small upstate NY town circa 1983. This morphs right into "Cut
My Chin Mama", a plaintive ballad roughly akin to The Decline of
British Sea Power's "Black Out" but with more emphasis on the Legend of
Zelda-worthy sound effects and samples.

"Blood State" concludes side A with Paul's most incendiary political
diatribe yet (even more infuriating than last year's "Pump Your First
at the Stupid F-cking Donkey"), which is basically an impassioned
indictment of the entire Mountain Time Zone's rightward slide over the
last 20 years (with some dire predictions of its future progression, in
one word: fascist secession).

Side two launches with a blast with a 12-minute instrumental jam which,
as far as I can tell, dips into every major and minor key and features
every instrument known to man, from an Amplified Abacus to a Zoological
Zither (whatever that means). Check out Chris's theremin solo at the
8:30 mark--the Coctails wish they could have "rocked the antenna so
well". After a couple standard pop-punk comedy numbers ("I Took Your
Mother Out For Quarter Drafts", "But Those Young Woman a Jager on Us,"
and the show-stoppingly ribald "Eat This Too"), things get beyond
strange with an improv nosie-jam homage to Seattle-area free noise
greats Noggin, where one can literally hear a kitchen sink being
slammed against a hollow refrigerator door. 10 seconds of Paul and his
girlfriend fucking than introduces album closer "Greatest Hits of the
Space Station" where Chris and Paul trade call-and-response lines
regarding a very sci-fi subject: the eradication of the human race and
establishment of a divine order of asexual robo-clones. This, of
course, is a nod to the French novelist Michel Houellbecq's "Elementary
Particles", and we found it to be a little more tha extremely
disturbing that P & C give every indication of being absolutely
sincere.

And thus lies this album';s main conflict and primary paradox: the
Shirts' stance on intimate relationships. On the one hand, these guys
come off as died-in-the-wool romantics, going so far as to invoke a
time travel ceremony to the date of their still-together parents' first
date (in order to ask them for advice). But compare this "Greatest
Hits" or any of the other misanthropic, nearly misogynist one-liners
("I like young women, especially when they're not around" from the last
album), and you've got some serious conflict.

A problem? For their prsonal lives, perhaps, but as fodder for 30 more
greatly albums--fuck no.

And don't push "stop" after tha last song, at 22:25 there's a ghost
track called "Meathead Surprise" which get you in more drunken brawls
than you'll know what to do with. Nice.