Wackiness.org Reviews Archive § Music

Enter the cellular phone; neat. Enter the camera equipped cell phone; neat-o. And so, I was driving down Nord Ave. when the red signaled me to stop. And stop I did, meanwhile the pedestrians busily skipped through the crosswalk when, in front of me, I perchanced to come into rare contact with a child that draped his head with the ignoble hair-(un)style often called the Mullet. The aforementioned “chillet” (child-mullet) was none the wiser that I, with techno prowess, pulled out my picture-taking, voice activated-dialing, modern marvel of a fucking phone in hopes to capture, in binary, the mysterious child's image. I know, mullet criticism is as old as those damn SPAM tees, but I am evil and wanted to revel in the glorious picture over a cup o' noodle luncheon with my old choir teacher. Huh? Well, innocent child mullets grow into big scary voodoo mullets. The worst of which was sported by my most hated Oakland A's player ever: Jose Canseco.

That being clear, so intense was my prejudice towards a band that would dare name themselves after such a wack-ass ballplayer. And yet, I have now embraced Cansecos of all sort. My priest lent me his ear, and I emptied into confessionals of spite and malice that had been directed at Mr. Canseco, The Cansecos and the poor child I exploited for this dreck I'm writing now. The self-titled debut from the Toronto duo won me over and I am now reformed. They did it with intention, they did it with pop-iness, they did it with tracks 1, 3, 5, and 10.

How did they do it? Well, this album is being hawked as an experimental-pop exercise. Contrary to packaging details, I'm hearing schizophrenia and diversity in here, but not too much experimental meanderings. If ‘experimental’ is supposed to mean avant-garde noise innovations then this disc is much too accessible and indebted to too many staples of electro-lap-pop to make it very experimental. So, The Cansecos, have created as they put it, “cut-and-paste experimentation and classic pop melodicism.” But is more heavy on the cut-and-paste melodicism.

The most impressive component of the eponymous release is that each track sounds uniquely different than the other. However, the whole is connected to its parts by a thread of vocal homogeny that makes each track easily enjoyable and seamless in transition. I can't stress this album enough for those who enjoy the fine aesthetic of computer assisted music.

Rating

90/100

Reviewer

Jacob Daley

Published

February 27, 2004