BRAINIAC: SMACK BUNNY BABY (1993)
1) I, Fuzzbot; 2) Ride; 3)
Smack Bunny Baby; 4) Martian Dance Invasion; 5) Cultural Zero; 6) Brat Girl; 7)
Hurting Me; 8) I Could Own You; 9) Anesthesize; 10) Draag; 11) Get Away.
All right, so despite their name, Brainiac
weren't exactly the most original
band to come out of the whole underground-indie-alternative bouillon of the
early 1990s. There may be a good reason, or even more than one, why their three
albums have been relegated to the «connaisseur» shelf, pardon my French again,
and why the memory of Sonic Youth, Pixies, Nirvana, and Radiohead will linger
long after the last real brainiac has
emptied his recycle bin containing Smack
Bunny Baby, Bonsai Superstar,
and Hissing Prigs In Static Couture.
After all, not everybody can be so lucky — wherever that bus is going, the
number of seats is always limited.
But none of that prevents me from actually liking these guys: I think their records
are fun, and their creative angle is actually quite unique, even if it does not
make a lot of sense. Basically, they were surrealistically aggressive punkers
with an electronic coating — but a retro
electronic coating at that, with the band's leader Tim Taylor playing a Moog as
his instrument of choice. Now, quickly, off the top of your head, how many punk
bands with Moog synths can you name? (I mean, other than Emerson, Lake &
Palmer, of course?) Not too many — even though, come to think of it, the Moog
can be as in-yer-face punk as any stringed electric instrument.
So, as the album kicks out the door, for the
first twenty-five seconds you feel like you're listening to a Pixies clone — a
little introductory noise and a droney guitar riff played at full throttle. But
as the vocals make their appearance, they are accompanied with a series of fussy
electronic noises that sound as if they've been taken from some arcade
experience — hilariously deconstructing any «authentic» anger and aggression
that may have been placed in the song. ʽI, Fuzzbotʼ could have worked even
without these quasi-Pacman bleeps and bloops, but its frantic "GET OUT OF
MY MIND!" chorus just sounds way
too much like Black Francis for the band to escape being branded as copycats. Add
some of these ridiculous electronics, though, and you get something seriously
different — and bizarrely intriguing.
Most of the songs here work at the intersection
of energetic and inspired, but utterly unoriginal alt-rock guitar riffage; Tim
Taylor's vocal hooks in the choruses, which can be catchy, but do not differ
that much from any other repetitive, screamy choruses in punk history; and the
use of electronics, formally «superfluous», never truly essential to the
songs' basic structures, but always serving as their main identificator — after
a brief period of initiation, you will never mistake a Brainiac song for
anything else, because the bleeping, howling, wheezing, wailing Moogs give them
away at a moment's notice.
Lyrically, Brainiac are also not too different
from the usual punk/alt-rock territories — their songs are mostly about pain,
confusion, insanity, lack/loss of self-identity, most of the topics revolving
somewhere in between the dangerous anguish of Kurt Cobain and the surrealist
paranoia of Black Francis. But since the tempos are consistently fast, the
guitars are consistently loud, and the vocals consistently rise to a scream,
you probably won't be able to make out most of the lyrics anyway, and why
should you? This band is all about finding out how cool a punk-rock guitar can
sound in a formerly alien context — sort of a «Mini-Sonatas for Pissed-Off
Electric Guitar and Moog Synth» experiment, and quite a successful one, in my
opinion, even if most of the songs seem so similar, if you discount occasional
individualistic vocal gimmicks (like the creative use of the "nah-nah nah
nah-nah-nah" teaser in ʽCultural Zeroʼ or the horrorific voice-and-synth
sonic meld in ʽDraagʼ which gives me awful visions of a person mutating into a
synthesizer — quite a productive idea for a musical video, I'd say).
Other than Tim Taylor, the band does not have
any creative quasi-geniuses at this point, but guitarist Michelle Bodine ain't
half-bad (since Taylor is also credited for guitar playing, I have no idea how
many of the riffs are actually played by her, but she must have been the primary guitar player during the band's live
shows anyway) and she has a strong Riot Grrrl-type voice as well — too bad they
only let her sing lead on one track (the aptly titled ʽMartian Dance Invasionʼ,
since nobody would be surprised if the Martians chose Brainiac as their
favorite dance music). On the whole, definitely not bad for a first try for someone
hailing from Dayton, Ohio — they may not be bursting with creativity, but their
one fresh idea works well enough for 36 minutes (and do thank God that they respect
the punk aesthetics enough not to let it run for 70, despite living in an age
when the new CD format was poisoning everybody's brains). Thumbs up for sure.
"since the tempos are consistently fast"
ReplyDeleteExcept for the opener, Cultural Invasion (hilarious nananananana!) and Get Away, which are mid tempo. That's a big plus, because it prevents the album from becoming monotonous (a huge complaint against Blind Guardian for instance). Nice riffs. Me likes this. It reminds me somewhat of both Nirvana's debut (which I like best) and Therapy? (Caucasian Psychosis was released in the USA in 1992, so who knows?)