3 keepers
keeper avg .231
There's a cute-ness to the sound of this album that had fortunately been produced out by the next album. The opening title song manifests this in a frantic tempo and keyboard- heavy composition that sounds like a just-after-NES (Super? Sega?) video game. "Miss Teen Wordpower" and "All For Swinging You Around" are also played at fast punk tempo, and there is no lack of energy in most of the album but chipmunk-y keyboards show up all over the place, not to mention the fact that all the drums on the album are recorded so dry and squished they sound electronic. Without these sugary elements the highly punctuated "From Blown Speakers" and "The New Face Of Zero And One" (which also borrows some clickity "Antmusic" percussion) would sound rocking instead of poppy. Dan Bejar's contributions go the extra mile to precious; "Chump Change" with a bunch of "Ooh ooh"s that sound like hooting, while his "Testament To Youth In Verse" for some reason needs to end with almost 2 minutes of 4 part harmony bell choir, sung: "no no no no no no, no no, no no no no no no, no no no." Fortunately some songs do break out of the cutesy mold, such as the Badfinger-like "Loose Translation," and bright, singalong chorus "One of the greats, on the way, hold on" of "July Jones"**** (even with the under water-sounding tremolo guitar riff). "The Laws Have Changed"**** gets downright ballsy when Kurt Dahle switches over to the toms and the ferocious "It's Only Divine Right"***** reaches perfection when Neko and the rest "aah aah aah" over the dirty piano riff. I was actually blown away by how powerful all these poppy songs are in a live setting (only on youtube so far) so that's how I'd recommend judging these songs.
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