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***Musicians reaching a point in their careers when it is imperative that they release an album with the most ridiculous title imaginable - it is a revered tradition with a long, colorful history. Honestly, now, Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band, what the hell's that about? And Their Satanic Majesty's Request? As if! And then there's Works, Volume 2. Where do they get this stuff! It should be perfectly obvious that Thinking Fellers Union Local 282 have been poised to gussy up the canon of Ridiculous Album Titles since, oh, about their third day as a band. Of course, there is a story behind Bob Dinners and Larry Noodles present Tubby Turdner's Celebrity Avalanche, a long, ridiculous story about a talkshow that's probably detailed in excruciating detail on a website somewhere. Their latest album on the Communion label, literally years in the making, went through numerous nomenclatural changes because of, y'know, certain negative associative baggage that each working moniker brought to the mind of the beholder. Savor the sigh of relief you can now freely breathe because we are not asking you to buy an album called Boobfeeler or Eickelberg of Nine or Adolf Hitler - the Nazi. If one had to complain about past TFUL282 recordings it could be argued that they're too ambitious for their own good - packed as they are with more unorthodox recording techniques and layers of sound than relentlessly minimal budgets allow producers to contain and accurately reproduce. The slow, methodical approach to creating an album serves this San Francisco quintet enormously well, and longtime TFUL282 producer Greg Freeman is the only person on Earth who is right for the job. Within the first seconds of the opening track, "Another Clip," anyone familiar with past TFUL282 efforts will suspect that they have finally made an album that sounds as good as it deserves to. And they won't be wrong. Bob Dinners and Larry Noodles present Tubby Turdner's Celebrity Avalanche will certainly join Strangers from the Universe and Admonishing the Bishops as a premier item in the band's discography, and in some ways, surpasses the earlier efforts. It's almost as if they've finally discovered stereo. TFUL282's biggest strength - arrangements that allow the ugly beauty of avant rock to meld organically with peppy little melodies that kick you in the nards - is finally flourishing not despite the recording quality, but because of it. Faux operettas suddenly transform into ground-to-a-halt shanties at the wrong speed; whale songs spontaneously corrupt themselves and become cries of harpooned whales; stockcar guitar riffs fishtail across bluegrass mirages; between debased jingles that have college radio station ID written all over them and chilly tinklers that could have been lifted directly from an hilarious new episode of Star Trek, backward Carnaby Street melodies battle like simultaneously occurring concept albums by the Kinks, the Pretty Things and . . . hell, name someone, Giles, Giles & Fripp. |
