Broom

Band: Someone Still Loves You Boris Yeltsin
Album: Broom
Best song: "Oregon Girl" has the best hook. "Yr Broom" is great.
Worst song: "Anne Elephant" isn't great. Overall, the whole record is just nice. Nothing great. Just listenable.

How much does a band name influence its exposure? Do crappy bands get more blog-time than they should because of a good name?

I always wonder this stuff because of the bands I enjoy that have changed recent names. Jason Molina's four differently named, though similar-sounding projects (Jason Molina/Pyramid Electric Co., The Magnolia Electric Co., and Songs:Ohia) may have put a dent into his exposure. Bill Callahan now releasing records under his name -- as opposed to his 11 recorded as Smog -- makes it harder to follow, on some level.

So, that's confusing.

I guess easy band names make life easier for fans. It's easy to be a fan of, say, Tortoise. It's not a tough name to remember. It's not a tough name to follow. Being a fan of, say, the Rolling Stones, isn't hard. Pink Floyd, Lynyrd Skynyrd and Jethro Tull are sometimes confusing if only because some lesser fans think them to be one dude instead of a collection of dudes. Metallica is a brilliant name for a metal band, as is Iron Maiden.

Whatever. I've written too much on this topic. The reason I was thinking about it is because indie rock bands often give themselves silly(ish) names and I always wonder if said names are a hurdle. Sure, a band like the I Love You, But I'm Not in Love With Yous (a college band while I was at University of Missouri) is good for a chuckle, but it's a pain to write and say. I Love You But I've Chosen Darkness is a great fucking band, but they're not really hard enough for their name. Margot & the Nuclear So and So's is a long-ass band name and a band that probably would've had more cache, if they actually had an easier name.

Anyway, Someone Still Loves You Boris Yeltsin is a brilliant concept. In the same way that Margot & the Nuclear So and So's does what they do well, Someone Still Loves You Boris Yeltsin is pretty good at what they do. As an indie pop band, SSLYBY hits all the relevant points. "Pangea" has the upbeat nature and the peppy vocals of the best indie pop has to offer. "Yr Broom" features the often-clapped hands of recent vintage indie rock as well as an acoustic guitar to die for. Vocally, the band combines harmonies of the Beach Boys with the scaled down intimacy of the singer/songwriter mold. "Travel Song" has a more snide vocal track, as the band laments a former flame. "Oregon Girl" is peppy, with a That Dog-guitar line that echoes the early 1990s, only done by four weenie dudes from Springfield, Missouri.

For the most part, the record does not sound as though it was recorded in someone's bedroom -- though it indeed was. "House Fire" is layered with keyboards and a picking guitar piece, while "Travel Song" only has tinges of Smog-production levels. "Gwyneth" is the lowest of the fidelity, with thinny drums backing up a crisp piano. The vocals buoy the song, indeed.

In a way, SSLYBY is a copy of a copy. In taking its cues from the Replacements and R.E.M., the band is rehashing a sound (jangle, jangle, everyone) that was a facsimile of something else in the first place. It's perfectly pleasant, but nothing we haven't heard from the Shins.

Kicking A Couple Around

Band: Smog
Album: Kicking A Couple Around (EP)
Best song: Basically, the entire record is good. "Your New Friend" has a special place in my heart.
Worst song: Nah. It's only four songs.

I don't know if I've recounted the story of my favorite introduction to independent music in this space. Basically, in junior high -- I started HS in the fall of 1995 -- I had heard of and vaguely knew of independent music. A friend from school had a brother involved in a few indie rock bands and in the scene. My friend's brother lived in a building (or near or something) with some dudes. They were in a band called 'Tortoise' and for a drummer, apparently, they were not to be missed (I was a dummer at the time).

Cut to the summer before my freshman year. Thanks to Nirvana, my introduction to punk rock was based in the Flipper, Sonic Youth and the like. I knew SST because I had some friends in a band that covered Black Flag and Meat Puppets. Punk was my first introduction to that stuff, but because of my friend with the brother in the local scene, I heard that the local college's radio station was the way to learn about music. So, I tried to listen to WNUR, Northwestern University's station. A guy named Spencer worked a weeknight rock shift that I came to love.

One evening's actions started my love of underground music and remains the key thing that made me who I am today. I still have the tape. It was the spring of 1996. I called in, without knowing a single track name -- remember, this was before Wikipedia or band Web sites -- to request somethign from Tortoise. I knew their most recent album title -- Millions Now Living Will Never Die -- but didn't know any song titles. Spencer asked me what song I wanted. Nervously, I said I wanted the second track on the first side. He said he'd play something soon -- not wanting, I'm sure, to explain to me that the first side of Millions was one long song, "Djed."

So, I popped in a tape. The tracklist remains "Gamera" (a pretty rare 12-minute non-album single Tortoise song), Cheap Trick's "Top of the World," June of 44's "June Miller," the brilliant Françoise Hardy's "Comment te dire adieu?" (the song that made me fall in love with any girl that speaks the language) and a long(ish) acoustic song recorded for the Peel Sessions called "Your New Friend" by a band called Smog.

Each of those songs will remain in my heart, probably, until I die. I spent a year and a half trying to track down the Gamera EP, eventually spending $75 on eBay for it in college. I saw June of 44 twice in one week. I bought every Smog record and saw Cheap Trick five times. I own two Hardy records despite not knowing a single word of French that doesn't appear on a menu.

They set a stage of meandering toward lo-fi meaning, weird emotion and quiet/loud dynamics. In a lot of ways, the bulk of my adult personality's foundation is built on those songs. I've tried to recreate the feeling I had listening to that tape a million times. I recently came close, but that thing's gone now.

(I later fell in kinda-love with two guys at my HS radio station and got into Yo La Tengo and Pavement via them.)

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Bill Callahan -- the man who is Smog -- knows how to write human-hating relationship songs. "Mistanthropy" is a word associated with Callahan as much as "lo-fi" and "folk."

"I Break Horses," according to our good friend Wikipedia, is a story of a one-night stand told in the nice metaphor of a horse trainer -- only Bill Callahan's famed, bizarre misanthropy can work that trick well. "The Orange Glow of a Stranger's Living Room" is a nice little track to end the EP, with some of Callahan's most expressive guitar work.

"Back in School" is a more rhythmic story of exes seeing one another for the first time in a bit. The main character wants to tell his ex of his plans, but can't come out with it. The awkward conversation, the party. It's all futile. And nothin will ever be less than awkard. It's cathartic and wonderful.

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The album's highlight, "Your New Friend" is a beautiful song, no doubt. At nearly seven minutes, it's a recounting of the depths of a boyfriend getting cheated on, while still living with the person. Holding to two or three lines per rhytymic line, Callahan's somber voice strains the near-blueprint explanation of the "chinese screen" and the bedroom the couple shared. Callahan's regret over past mistakes felt (though not actually mistakes) rings true to anyone being wronged:

Now this has been
Going on every night
Since that week i left town
It really makes me think
I shoulda stuck around

Callahan's codependent, pathetic protaginist knows his girl has checked out, both emotionally and physically, and remains. It's a tragic story told only via a few repeated strummed guitar lines and Callahan's melodramatic baritone.

Veckatimest

Band: Grizzly Bear
Album: Veckatimest
Best song: "Two Weeks" is a delight and "Fine For Now" is amazing.
Worst song: "Hold Still" isn't great.

In describing St. Vincent to a friend recently, I mentioned that Annie Clark used to work with Sufjan Stevens on some of his records. Similarly, in old conversations with my late best friend, he used to complain about the irony-laden theatrics of Stevens' records.

People don't love Stevens' work for understandable reasons. I've mentioned in this and other spaces about my hatred for things that sound like showtunes. Stevens treads a very difficult line,

But, this isn't about Stevens. It's about Grizzly Bear, indie rock "it" band of the past few years (well, no, that's probably Animal Collective). The Brooklyn band has been near the top of every critic's list since the band's 2004 debut, Horn of Plenty. Lo-fi and pretty, Ed Droste made the record, essentially, in his bedroom alone. Droste has since filled out the band.

Grizzly Bear, in a lot of ways, is a post-Sufjan band. Veckatimest, named after an island in Massachusetts, is theatric and far-reaching. The record is ambitious, though not annoying so. The string arrangements are stellar and the keyboard combinatons make for something that sounds -- and I mean this in the best possible way -- a low-key great Elton John record, only with vocals that sound like a normal human's.

The jazz opening of "Southern Point" opens the album with the genre hopping evident of the band. "Ready, Able" moves from the soft pleasantries of Droste's vocals to a swelling guitar piece to a lilting harpsichord bit (I think it's a harpsichord. "About Face" has a Nick Drake-esque vocal. The harmonies "While You Wait for the Others" are rivaled only by those on the rollicking single "Two Weeks." "I Live With You" is low-key until the band explodes undeer a guitar/drum countdown-esque brush, with the song eventually using song-effect-sounding vntage keyboards to accent the cacophony at the end of the record. "Cheerleader" is an easy slink and features the Brooklyn Youth Chorus, drawing one of the albums more sonically evocative tracks.

But, the band's easy relationship-based songwriting holds the record together. Relying on easy phrasing and repetition, the band's lyrics are emotional and delivered with an emotional ferocity lost in similarly lambasted "boring" music. On "Fine For Now," for example, Droste's "There was time, it took time" chorus lines ring true while "Two Weeks" has the less self-confident chorus:

Would you always
Maybe sometimes
Make it easy
Take your time

It's the stage of breakup we've all felt. It's the desperation, the lyric bargains for just a bit of understanding. It's the notion that the one person is simply trying and trying to be something untenable, the perfect boy/girlfriend for the other person. S/he is doing the best s/he can, but it's not enough and it's too hard. But, indeed, cutting it off would be devastating. Time is needed for the Sisyphian task of becoming a better mate.

Maybe I'm reading too much into that lyric. It's the best song on a great album. Evocative, upbeat an pretty, "Two Weeks" is the highlight of Veckatimest.

Creepy video:

Rabbit Fur Coat

Band: Jenny Lewis
Album: Rabbitt Fur Coat
Best song: "You Are What You Love" is great. "The Big Guns" is awesome.
Worst song: "Happy" is pretty mediocre.

The fourth record reviewed on this little site was that of Jenny Lewis' band Rilo Kiley, More Adventurous. Jenny Lewis' voice, though not really rangy, is a lovely instrument.

Lewis' first solo record -- though, technically, it is Jenny Lewis with the Watson Twins -- is just that: a non-too-rangey exploration of a lovely instrument. Lewis prefers a soft, indie country genre that doesn't branch out and doesn't actually exist much. Supposedly, Bright Eyes' Conor Oberst asked Lewis to record the album for his label, Team Love, and Lewis agreed, putting out what she's called a "soul record."

I don't know. The album's a little soft for that genre and the strings/guitar combination file the album distinctly in the country drawer.

"Born Secular" ends with typical Lewis repetition and theatrics, but sounds more like a Loretta Lynne record than anything else. "It Wasn't Me" is a soft, (electric) guitar-and-voice lament. The quick chords and easy picking -- layered over one another -- of "The Big Guns" are among Lewis' higlights, all before the song's drums kick in. HEr cover of the Traveling Wilburys "Handle with Care" (assisted, vocally, by M. Ward, Oberst and Death Cab for Cutie's Ben Gibbard) is nice, as well.

Lewis' lyrical ability is showed in the album more than any Rilo Kiley record. "Rabbit Fur Coat" is a sad tale of class envy, with the titular overcoat as a symbol of lost hope. "Rise Up With Fists" tells a more anti-authoritarian lament, as Lewis takes down preachers, business heads and community leaders in an almost Puritan fashion.

Of course, Lewis' lack of religiosity is a major theme of the record. "Born Secular" has Lewish saying that God goes "where he wants" and that he is "not in me." "The Charging Sky" takes down the idea of a merciful God ("Still they're dying on the dark continent/It's been happening long enough to mention it") and the institutions of church ("And it blinds you into fear and consuming and fight"), even asking "What if God's not there?" And, of course, "The Big Guns" has one of my favorite opening verses ever in a song:

Well you praise him
Then you thank him
Til you reach the by-and-by
And I've won hundreds at the track
But I'm not betting on the afterlife

I love this. For someone claiming to make a "soul" record, Lewis flys in the face of one of the key themes of the genres she claims and is playing (soul and country).

---

The album's best song, though, is a love song. Like Rilo Kiley's "Portions For Foxes," "You Are What You Love" is a long song gone awry. Lewis sings of being "a coward who paints a bullshit canvas" and wants not to be "a symbol or a monument, your rite of passage to fufillment." Beginning the song with the falsely confident proclamation "This is no great illusion, when I'm with you I'm looking for a ghost," Lewis puts her commonly screwed up love in full view.

And, again, like "Portions For Foxes," the chorus takes a portion of the previous and adds to it. In the final chorus -- indeed, final lyric -- of "You Are What You Love," Lewis calls back to the initial lines, rhyming the common chorus lines "You are what you love, not what loves you back" with the magic reference, singing:

And I'm in love with illusions
So saw me in half
I'm in love with tricks
So pull another rabbit out of your hat

Lewis' voice is bathed in a simple stutter drumbeat, backing vocals by the Watson Twins, a gorgeous harp, a moving bass line and some easy guitar. It's a crafted song, with Lewis' instrument rising above the rest.

---

I would be remiss in mentioning Jenny Lewis without mentioning her personal style and looks. She was, after all, a child actress and is, not unlike Neko Case, something of an indie rock sex symbol. Quoting myself:

Case is a certain type of indie rock persona, the "hot chick with a kickass voice." I'd suggest she's like Feist or Joanna Newsom in that case, but I find neither of those two artists to be particularly attractive.

Jenny Lewis is that, only actually good-looking. She's a lovely girl, though absolutely not my type. She's small and lithe, with shockingly red hair in a little-girl-meets-hipster style. It's moreso her personal style -- including that hairstyle -- that confounds me.

One minute, she dresses like a normal -- albeit hipstery -- young woman (personal favorite here). But, most of the time dresses like someone in a bad , or at some weird rodeo thing . Some of her weirder outfits are shown here.

She's a lovely woman, but, man, does she dress oddly.

Since

Band: Richard Buckner
Album: Since
Best song: "Ariel Ramirez" is brilliant. "Jewelbomb" is awesome, "Believer" is a classic. The whole record is great.
Worst song: No, it's all good.


For the life of me, I do not understand why Richard Buckner isn't the world's biggest alt-country artist. While Ryan Adams cashes huge checks and is the subject of a thousand teenage crushes, Buckner still plays half sold-out shows to weary truckers, granola eaters and NPR listeners.

Indeed, Buckner's finest moments on wax are far more sincere, tender and evocative than the average folk/country/indie record. While Adams looks to be young, American and handsome, Buckner looks like he could be your deadbeat cousin. The one who smokes too much weed, but holds down a job hanging drywall or installing

I guess Adams is a bad analogue, as his preening and lucky timing ("New York, New York" was a single released in the fall of 2001) have made him a just-under-the-radar household name. Moreover, his sunny optimism (in a genre not usually marked by such feeling) permeates his songs.

Richard Buckner, on the other hand, writes about his divorce.

---

Buckner's first records were decidedly folky affairs. Bloomed's best single -- the tender and passionate "The Worst Way" -- is simply Buckner, his guitar and his tears. His two subsequent records play similarly; Buckner sounds like a wounded bird, relaying his sorrow across his records.

Since is a more amped up affair. "Believer" is a rocker, driven by a strong electric guitar riff. "Jewelbomb" is a love letter infused with easy sarcasm. "The Ocean Cliff's Clearing" is wonderfully arrange. Though without drums, the song's layered guitars and piano emphasis show a more mature songwriter.

Buckner's stripped-down sound remains, on much of the record. "Ariel Ramirez," "Raze" and "Slept" all feature Buckner and his guitar. And nothing else. Each contains a guitar line that echoes Buckner's melody.

The album is decidedly confessional and decidedly intimate. Buckner laments his loneliness in "10-Day Room," serenades on "Jewelbomb" and warns on "Boys, The Night Will Bury You." "Goner w/Souvenir" tells the story of a mental and physical long distance relationship. "Ariel Ramirez" -- used in a Subaru ad, for some reason -- has as much energy in its long pauses as it does in Buckner's slowly picking guitar lines. "Coursed" speaks of a woman in an untenable situation as Buckner intones that she "stood on back with a heart attack and took the smoke out for a ride."

Since's sincerity is what drives the record. When Buckner warns "before I'm inside, you'd better know," he means it, only to follow "let's make our own/wake up in some wild, familiar time." He sounds broken singing "I kept your poem here/with all my other gear." "Took a turn and a scattered look" paints his picture of a woman in "Lucky Buzz" with the level of sincerity Adams reserves for his smirking irony, only for Buckner to sarcastically mention "we're the lucky ones."

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I've left the self-indulgent bit to the end, because no one really cares how I got into certain records. In this case, my junior year of high school, I was the music director of WNTH Radio, New Trier's radio station located on the fifth floor of our school (I used to pee off the roof sometimes on night shifts).

Anyway, when I became music director, I would listen to anything that came from certain labels or had associations with certain musicians (aka Thrill Jockey, Touch & Go, Merge and the like).

One of the names adorning the cover of Since is John McEntire's. McEntire is the drummer and producer in one of my favorite bands, Tortoise. I knew absolutely nothing about Since and fell in love with an album I otherwise wouldn't have seen.

Indeed, this randomness is something I miss about music exploration. In the name of efficiency (mainlining music I'd probably enjoy thanks to my tastes), sites like Pandora and Last.fm have careful algorithms to make it such that the new music is similar to the music I already enjoy.

But, like the streamlined and niche news I enjoy, I've not branched out into new music solely because someone played on it or I liked the album cover. This is the end of radio, of course, and the end of the record store. So it goes, I guess.

But, I'll never forget the feeling of listening to "Believer," Since's opening track, for the first time. It was new, it was interesting. It was something.

E=MC2

Band: Mariah Carey
Album: E=MC²
Best song: "Touch My Body" is a classic. "Migrate" isn't bad.
Worst song: "I Wish You Well" has some biblical stuff in it. Which is very weird.

I've said it before, but I'm incredibly proud of my RS project. It's too bad I never found the money to self-publish a book out of it.

Anyway, the pride is more than the marathon-ness of the project than any actual insight I discovered in listening to all those records. I'm not a particularly insightful or smart guy. I mostly just gathered some interesting information about the good records and tried to humorously shit on the bad ones. Ultimately, I improved my writing and I learned a lot about music.

One of the few recommendations I had for the list was the suggestion that Mariah Carey be a part of the list. There is no excuse for Carey's absence on the RS list, as it came out in 2003, eight albums into her career.

It's simple. Carey's voice, persona and music have been as influential as nearly any in the last 20 years. Take a look at the charts and you'll see Carey's influence everywhere.

Which brings up the question: Why was she left off the list? Obviously, sales is not the only category by which RS measured the artists on the list; Pavement, Robert Johnson and Massive Attack never sold a ton of records. And Garth Brooks (who should be), Hootie and the Blowfish, Celine Dion and Shania Twain (all of whom probably shouldn't be) aren't on the list. Still, sales does indicate a level of cultural integration that is nearly impossible to ignore.

Mariah Carey has the third-most number one albums for all female artists (behind Barbara Streisand and Madonna) and was the best-selling female artist of the 1990s. She has the most number one singles of any solo artist and the second-most of any band or artist (behind only the Beatles).

I'd call it racial (notice I didn't say racist. Things can be racial without being racist.), but Someone is buying her records and it's not just 13-year-old girls.

I think there's a general disinterest by the RS people in two things:

1. Music of a relatively recent vintage


2. Urban pop music

(This is why R. Kelly is also left off the list. That and the peeing.)

Mariah Carey is the queen of urban pop music. She started as a quasi-innocent sugary tart of a singer (See "Emotions" and all those videos wherein she's wearing a flannel shirt with curly hair.) with a ridiculous vocal range. She turned into a more sexualized woman after splitting with Tommy Mottola and became something of an urban diva, with a reputation for being difficult, flighty and talented.

She spent an entire episode of MTV Cribs changing outfits for each new room -- decidedly that show's nadir. She was the first time I can remember an artist suffering from "exhaustion," as in, she was drunk and passed out at a club. She starred in Glitter, a movie that's up there with the worst movies I've ever seen. She got married last year in secrecy to a guy 15 years her junior. They are, according to Carey, "Soulmates."

Awesome.

The RS editors don't spend time with young girls aspiring to be singers, because the girls my age and younger that grew up with Carey as a role model are all now dominating the charts. Rihanna? Cites Mariah Carey as an influence. Christina Aguilera? Stole the squeaky/powerful sustained note stuff straight from Carey. Beyonce? A better-looking Carey clone with a more powerful diva streak.

Carey is as influential as Janet Jackson, who has two albums on the list.

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Carey's last album is actually really pleasant. While other artists seem to have overtaken her in the public's heart, Carey's five-octave range -- an instrument she is too quick to show off, by the way -- remains a wonder. Her devotion to more hip hop-influenced R&B pop music is evident. On E=MC², Carey's recent tendency toward such music is picture perfect. First single "Touch My Body" is vintage Carey; it is a romantic smooth jam asking her man to give her "what I deserve" and to "feel on" her "curves." It's not raunchy, but sexy. Though I want Young Jeezy to be punched in the head, but Carey's work on "Side Effects" -- from the stutter-quick verses to the smooth verses -- is among her best. "I'm That Chick" has an almost disco feel to it and has Carey's sexiest voice at the ready, double-tracked and fun. "Love Story" tells a nice, though dumb, story over a melody that Carey's voice is perfect for. "Migrate" features a T-Pain guest and, for some reason, Carey's vocals through an auto-tune effect; it works because Carey's voice is so good for the song. The song's odyssey from the car to the club to wherever is a neat sorta dance narrative and fits Carey's new persona well.

"Bye Bye" isn't anything special and "I Wish You Well" are just OK. "Love Story" is a mediocre Jermaine Dupree track (though, I'd say that's a pretty repetitive phrase). Carey's attempt at reggae ("Cruise Control") doesn't really work.

But, generally, E=MC² is a nice record by an amazing artist.

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Sadly, the idiots at Universal won't let me embed the official (brilliant) video for "Touch My Body," so, you'll have to click here for the it.

Let me say this, too: Mariah Carey is a drop-dead gorgeous woman. She's clearly nuts and has a weird utlra feminity -- like Pamela Anderson, Carey almost seems like what a cross-dressing man thinks women should look like -- that turns me off (I'm straight, but that super feminine stuff -- prissy nonsense like dangly earrings, big updo hair, mani/pedi and the like -- really turns me off.). But, she's outstandingly good-looking and her body -- bought or not -- is amazing, even at 39. I'll quote a pretty old Bill Simmons column with which I agree:

And nothing drives a woman crazier than hearing a guy say, "I think Mariah Carey is hot" -- you might as well just say that women shouldn't have the right to vote. She's the best. I will defend her lunatic sexiness to the death.

Almost every woman I know -- save for one or two -- thinks Mariah Carey sucks and is a weirdo or a whore or whatever. But, man, is she good-looking.

Incredibad

Band: The Lonely Island
Album: Incredibad
Best song: "I'm On A Boat" is amazing and certainly "Dick in a Box" is a classic.
Worst song: Bleh. Whatever. It's all goofy jokes, no?

In a way, the Lonely Island guys are the Death Cab for Cutie of comedy. The next-big-thing-cum-famous, Andy Samberg and company were indie rock comedy originally. Looking scraggly and slightly Williamsburg (not to mention actually hailing from Berkely), the trio self-produced videos they uploaded to YouTube and ended up writing and -- in the case of Semitic-handsome leading man Samberg -- performing on Saturday Night Live. Major label time, folks.

Saturday Night Live kind of sucks. It's nearly impossible to do topical sketch comedy for 90 minues a week, forget doing it well. The show has always overplayed catchphrases and characters. For every funny sketch, there are 10 that go on far too long, all-often with bad celebrity impressions.

Let's not forget, it's never been great. Adam Sandler was funny on the show, but his movies are better. Will Ferrell's best work -- honestly, what the fuck happened to that guy? -- is probably from the show, but he's certainly been a success. Mike Myers' crazy ass created many characters on the show, but his best work was, no doubt, in the Austin Powers movies. Eddie Murphy was great on the show, but his standup is a million times better.

In the show's current incarnation, the digital shorts are, by far, the best part of the show. From what I've read, The Lonely Island guys have free reign over the shorts and have done them well. The songs are nearly always funny and the non-song sketches are strange, but funny.

---

I love NAthan Rabin's writing and he recently wrote a bit about Samberg's film, Hot Rod:

The cultural gatekeepers sadly were not willing to go to bat for a movie where a typical gag involves the hero having an out-of-body experience and watching a sentient grilled-cheese sandwich wrestling a taco that fights dirty.

Samberg thrived in a very weird, very new, very specific context: within absurdist two-minute musical videos riffing on the cheesiest depths of pop culture. So perhaps it’s no surprise that audiences didn’t embrace him as the star of a studio movie.

I think that's a fair point. What would the Lonely Island have been had they not been born around the same time as myself? Would they have been Weird Al Yankovic? Would they have ended up as writers for The Simpsons? Who really knows?

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Incredibad is a compilation of a lot of new songs and many of the digital song shorts. For the most part, it's great, though not perfect. "Ras Trent" doesn't really work, as Samberg's goofy voice is too put-on. The record is a little too hip hop heavy ("Natalie's Rap," "Dream Girl" and that stupid Santana song are far too much). The album is probably too long. I never found "Lazy Sunday" to be particularly funny and the faux corruption of my dream woman makes "Natatlie's Rap" a mostly tired exercise.

Nevertheless, the record is really fun. What makes Incredibad and, moreover, the Lonely Island guys so fun? Parody works well when it's dead-on and whoever wrote the music for this record really know how to mimic specific genres. When the group branches out onto specific genre, it's nearly perfect. The group's three great achievements all echo perfectly the genres they mock. "Dick in a Box," both the video and the song, has a melody straight out of a Color Me Badd song. That it became a viral cultural touchstone is a testament to Justin Timberlake's full-on devotion to the song.

"Jizz in my Pants" is similarly great. The song's electronic vocals and the Euro-tinged beat sound like the type of thing you'd hear at an all-ages club. That the lyrics are another weird adolescent thing just tops it off.

"I'm on a Boat" is great for its absurdity. The song clearly mocks "Big Pimpin'" and that Akon song ("I'm so Paid") and the entire bizarre hip hop fascination with yachts. The song, indicative of the entire record, is a study in juxtaposition. Like a reverse Belle and Sebastian -- a band that used twee music to sing about dildos and young people having strokes -- "I'm on a Boat" uses a spot-on hip hop beat and a guest spot by T-Pain to scream "the boat engines makes noise, motherfucker!" In fact, T-Pains breakdown is among the song's highlights. Using his auto-tune, he ends his ridiculous interlude with the bizarre and biologically wrong conceit that he "fucked a mermaid." The brilliance lies both in the lyrics and the execution. The call-and-reponse lite rapping of Akiva Schaffer and Samberg is striking, with T-Pain echoing the final word of each line. Juxtaposition at its best, the novelty of being on a boat has never been better.

Indeed, absurdity is the name of the game and it works, mostly. "Dream Girl" has Norah Jones singing about Chex Mix, while the sexy vocals of Julian Casablancas singing about old people fucking in "Boombox" is mind-bending. Humor shows us that the world makes no sense and Incredibad exploits this well.