I'm Mister 01000000101 (Or, I Think I Snorted What Thing I Was Supposed to Fuck and Eated What Thing I Was Supposed to Snort)

Hey!  I should hate this!

The Hot Toddies - HTML (mp3) (buy)

It's over-cute, faux-clever.  I should hate The Hot Toddies (myspace).  The NoCal gals' gentle delivery and casual ambition make Smell the Mitten - Spinal Tap nod noted - come off like a nudging, winking lark.  But that lack of self-seriousness comes bundled with some great harmonies, a willingness to genre-dabble, and an overall competence.  The stuff gets more tolerable with each listen.

Tolerable!  A rave!

Okay: They'll steal your heart while they rot your teeth out.

This interview is pretty much the best thing ever.  Music nerd who's probably never been alone in a room with girls before asks his guests if there's an "overarching theme" or anything that "informs the sound of your band."  Gets answers like: "It's not like we have huge, like, goals."  When he mentions the songs' "sexual component," the girls snicker.

It works, the pounding of sugarsweet voices against salty lyrics, when you're more convincing than coy.  "Don't want no veggie burger, gimme the all-meat pattie" ("Sugar Daddy").  Eh.  "It is so goddamn motherfucking cuntfaced shitballs turdbugger bitchslapping cockknocking ballsucking expensive here" ("Suck My Balls").  Now that's what I'm talkin' ‘bout.  Bubblegum potty mouths.

(There's also some swell retrolingo.  A surf song (called "The Surf Song") has Gidget smoking spliffs.  And I like the anachronistic contrast in "HTML's" "We went to the bop/my heart gigaflopped.")

They have songs about how Seattle makes them horny, how converting sunlight to food is awesome.  Colin Meloy is probably stabbing himself in the eye because he didn't write "Anais Nin vs. The Pirates of Santa Cruz" first.  By God, I hope he is.

According to the Toddies' myspace their song "Motorscooter"(*), about a dance called the "Motorscooter," is involved in a "Battle of the Bands" on the MTV (something I find unlikely, as MTV has nothing to do with "bands").  But it's the doo-wop I posted above that earns them a place as this week's IT-girls.  The chimes dignify the chorus, and you'll find yourself singing "W-W-W, whuh-oa whuh-oa whuh-oa, dot-com" so often it'll make you want to ‘URL.

(Someone please stab me in the eye.)

At the very least, "HTML" will have 40-year-old inner-tube salesmen from Ohio wondering what might have been.

Bonus!:  Here's a song from the band's self-titled EP.  It's a car song, so they rock it up a bit.

The Hot Toddies - Jaguar Love (mp3) (buy)

BonusBonus!!:  Because I couldn't fit their "Blood Orgy of the Atomic Fern" into my Halloween mixtape, and because I love you, the greatest car song ever.  Tony Orlando and Dawn!

The Dead Milkmen - Bitchin' Camaro (mp3) (buy)

(*)  For some reason "Motorscooter" reminds me of The Oohlas' superior "Rupert Krikor Chang," minus the Pixies dressing and pet suicide.

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Hey!  It's a couple days after the hunt, but if you're still feeling Halloweenish (-ie?), there are holiday mixes scattered like spilled candy all over the net, most less -abilly than mine.

If you're feeling peckish, swing by:  Ear Farm, Pop Tarts Suck Toasted, Soundbites, Captain Obvious, It's a Trap, Nialler 9, Pretty Much Amazing, Speed of Dark.

Sufjan Stevens!  Ooooo!  Scarrrrrrrrry!

The day also inspired a brief resurrection at Record Robot (which was where I first heard those Vincent Price cooking tapes, long ago).

Brace yourself for them Christmas mixes.  Wonder if Sufjan Stevens has done anything even remotely appropriate.

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Hey!  The best track on the new Britney Spears record sounds a little like The Faint doing a trombone-less version of the Heat Miser song from The Year Without a Santa Claus!  It's awesome!

Song's called "Piece of Me," and there's really no call to post it here.  Don't need the unnecessary attention, for one; it'll be everywhere soon enough, for another.  For now, it's streaming over at AOL along with the rest of the album, so go over there and listen to it ten billion times.

Blackout is thesis-bait.  While it's not interesting or exciting musically, it's the most consistent Spears record I've heard (I own three, passed on Britney).  No ballads or skits, nothing that's straight pop, nothing spare, it's straight-up, straightforward dance stuff.  It's begging to be taken apart and remixed ad forever because, though it's consistent, it's hardly cohesive.  The only thing holding it together is the celebrity of the barely-present singer whose name's on the project.

Spears is in the eighth year of pop stardom.  Doesn't that seem like an amazing accomplishment?  And doesn't it feel like it's been twice that long?  She's kept going - or someone's kept her going - via low expectations, a perpetual sex tease, and quality tentpole singles.  For the most party the woman is a nonentity.  Everything good that's ever come out of her mouth (hey now) has been given her by Swedish lyricists.  Her movements are overdocumented, but there's no philosophy, no personality; there's lots of footage, but there's no film.  Empty Vessels make for good sex fantasy objects and good media stories because there's no ugly actuality to get in the way.

One of the things that makes Blackout interesting is that it confounds the current media storyline.  At best, right now, she's recognized as something to pity.  She's been cast as incompetent, clueless, maybe crazy, out of shape and no longer sexually desirable(*); she's not supposed to have her name on something as capable as this record.

Not great, but capable.  A rave!

"Piece of Me" is a great song, the best on this record, and it's really just a big synthy shrug.  The title suggests she's asserting herself, fighting back.  But she sounds a little sad and a little surprised.  People want photos of her shopping for groceries.  "For real? Are you kidding me?"  The most threatening she gets is when she tells everyone who wants a piece of her that there's a long line of people who want the same, and you'll be at the end of it.  Take that!  Or, a number!  The most revealing she gets is when she says, "Guess I can't see the harm in working and being a mama," which falls flat when we all feel we've witnessed failed efforts in both areas, recently.  The most human she sounds is when she pronounces "derriere" with an "-err" at the end.  (A lot of "err" on this record.  The song "Radar" somehow rhymes its title with "operaterr.")

Mostly, "Piece" is a list -

I'm Miss American Dream Since I Was Seventeen

I'm Miss Bad Media Karma

I'm Mrs. Lifestyles of the Rich & Famous

I'm Mrs. Oh My God That Britney's Shameless

I'm Mrs. Extra-Extra This Just In

I'm Mrs. She's Too Big Now She's Too Thin

And so on.  So:  She is what we say about her.  (There's also a lot of being-watched on the record.)

Calculated or ironic, the vocals on the bulk of the record are overmanipulated.  Never an amazing singer, it's always possibly she's being pitchshifted, but:  She sounds like she actually phoned this fucker in.

It's nice that "Piece of Me" isn't another confrontational celebrity whinefest of the "Leave Me Alone" ilk.  But that wasn't an option.  To be self-righteous or self-defensive, you've got to have some sense of self.

(*)  During the "Slave 4 U" era, a piece of Britney would have been an offer impossible to refuse.  On Blackout, in "Get Naked," Brit sings, "What I gotta do to get you to want my body?"

*

I also like "Freak Show."  Despite the rapping.

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Hey!  Let's lose our collective will to live!

That's Kelly Sweet (myspace); she's only eighteen, and we're not out to make her cry or anything.  Her debut CD, We Are One, is available wherever fish, barrels, and shotguns are sold.

Oh, fine.  The cover starts off well enough.  (And let's face it, it's ten times more listenable than any of the anonymous bombast ballads Aerosmith's churned out over the past decade.)  She has a nice voice, and I like the dissolve in the middle of her first line; it's nice that the lyrics start before she's opened her mouth, and there's no overpronounced digital wipe.  But as soon as "...how to win" echoes out of control, and we're subjected to the inTENSE guitar - each nylon string mic'd separately, no doubt - the whole thing just starts to reek.

So, sure, the kid's a kid.  But the other songs on her myspace can't be described as anything better than Lite Jazz (because the "Aural Turds" genre marker never caught on).  Dave Koz is her #1 bestest myspace pal!  If you're eighteen and you even know who Dave Koz is, those must have been eighteen miserable years.

The hilarious, overwritten bio on Sweet's site says there are songs on her album We Are One sung in English, Italian, French and Sanskrit.  Precocious much?  "This music is not about me," she says.  "It's about the soul in all of us.  I am just happy to have a voice to convey these things to the world."

Of the Aerosmith cover: "When I sang it, it just felt like magic."  Yeah, the sort of magic that should have a tornado-driven Kansan home dropped on it.

Her site's bio describes the new "Dream On" as "a spiritual salve for our troubled times."

An especially heavy Kansan home.

tags: hot toddies  britney spears  kelly sweet  halloween mix  

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