Wackiness.org Reviews Archive § Music

Need New Body's genre classification often contains the prefix "spaz-", and with good reason. Their sophomore release, UFO, features songs about going to the beach, losing a pen, and just listing random words, with titles such as "Pisscat", "Make Gay Love Not War", and "Giggle Bush Meets CompUSA". From the topics and song titles alone, you may think you've formed a decent idea of what this album may sound like, but only once you hear it do you realize how good it is, how randomly, strangely and insanely musical it is. The end result falls somewhere between the Boredoms, the Residents and the albums you made as a six-year-old (although the Pirates' "Hazardus [sic] Habits" holds more sentimental value to me, it can be argued that, musically, UFO is infinitely better).

The songs on UFO range from noise ("Pisscat") to video game background music ("Tittiepop [In Japan]") to surprisingly talented banjo plucking ("Magic Finger") to goofy high-energy ("Pen", "Beach") to not-so-goofy high-energy ("Ox", "Show Me Your Heart") to spoken word ("Red as a Bone"), etc., etc. Each song is sort of its own sub-genre, and while a complete album of any given one of them might be tiring, annoying or downright terrible, when compiled with all the others, they create a whole that's kind of addictive.

"Show Me Your Heart" is the high point of the album, and probably as accessible as the album gets - its randomness is more catchy and structured than at other points. "Red as a Bone" is a tribute to Captain Beefheart's "The Blimp", with its cryptic (random) vocals and repetitive instrumental background. "Beach" and "Pen" are the heights of energy on the album, and their respective choruses, "Everybody's at the beach!" and "Pen pen pen, where's my pen?", do nothing but add to the infectious sense of fulfillment you get from the fun that the musicians are obviously having with themselves.

This album is not for everyone; in fact, it's definitely for fewer people than it's not for. But if you're in that target percentile, UFO can make for an amazingly enjoyable listen.

Rating

87/100

Reviewer

Noah Jackson

Published

December 02, 2003