Thursday, August 14, 2003
Copyright © Las Vegas Mercury

Listening Station

Junior Senior

D-D-Don't Don't Stop the Beat

If--and this is a substantial if--you can get past the neon rainbows, the jolly robots and the crooner with the Ron Jeremy pornstache on the cover of Danish duo Junior Senior's debut D-D-Don't Don't Stop the Beat, you're in for the most delirious, charmingly silly dance-pop you've heard since some jerkoff filched your Jackson 5 Greatest Hits cassette. It's strange, too, because the Danes are such a notoriously depressed bunch--according to sociologist Herbert Hendin, they have a higher suicide rate than nearly every developed country in the world. Apparently, guilt is the primary means by which Danish parents discipline their children, and this guilt sometimes froths and seethes until the disheartened Dane "accidentally" chokes on a Lego or calls it quits in a mysterious ice-fishing mishap.

Fortunately, there's no trace of any such guilt on D-D-Don't Don't Stop the Beat (unless, of course, you count my guilt at being driven to a spontaneous Running-Man-cum-Cabbage-Patch dance in my kitchen by "Move Your Feet"). Rather, every song is a hedonistic homage to good times, from the lo-fi garage scratch of "White Trash" to the self-centered bounce of "Go Junior, Go Senior" and "Dynamite." Best of all, the enhanced CD includes the "Move Your Feet" video--a low-rent, digital cartoon in which an Atari-vision Senior calls a friendly, fat-pixelled pineapple for help after getting hot sauce poured in his ass. Plus, there's a drunken, homicidal squirrel and a dancing hot dog to boot. Say what you will, that's just good fun.--Newt Briggs

The High Strung

These Are Good Times

"A frank garage aesthetic," reads a publicist's description of the High Strung's music on its bio. I'd like to find the garage band that isn't claiming to keep it real. Perhaps then the subgenre would get interesting again.

What made lo-fi nostalgia rock so interesting two years ago was it countered the disingenuousness of most modern pop, and some of it was quite catchy. Bemoan the Strokes all you want, but leadman Julian Casablancas can write a tune. Ditto for the White Stripes' Jack White. However, most of the bands trying to recapture MC5-like glory are fronting more attitude and sloughing off its responsibility to engage its listener.

The High Strung, from Detroit until Brooklyn beckoned, has some solid tunes in its canon (check out "The World's Smallest Violin"), and there's nary a sneer in its charming delivery. There's also a distinction that sets the quartet apart from the rest of the new power-chords-and-tube-amps crowd, and it's rooted in the late-'60s, early-'70s British pop sound, going as far back as the Beatles' Revolver, and continuing the tour of duty through various points of the Who, the Kinks and the Jam's career. Another reference point is Rhino's seminal psychedelic lo-fi archive, Nuggets, as well as newer retro-pop acts like the Apples in Stereo and Beulah.

However, bands like this need to figure out how to take their inspirations and build a new musical approach from them, rather than rehashing its barely-distinguishable source material. That might be as much a backhanded compliment as it is a criticism, but the High Strung should aim to influence artists to come, rather than mimicking those from the past.--Mike Prevatt

Superjoint Ritual

A Lethal Dose of American Hatred

Frontman Philip Anselmo's prolific output (14 different projects and side projects, including Pantera and Down) certainly makes him one of the hardest-working men in the industry. He rages, records, tours--and shamelessly "demands your utmost respect." Or so his self-referential album sticker warns.

SJR's second release, A Lethal Dose delivers on the promise of its title: from larynx-searing growls to scourging drums to anti-everything lyrics (well, except destruction). Always at its heart, is seething, black anger--"a knife lifting up from Hell"--driven by rapid-fire thrash rhythms and grinding guitars. SJR spews enough bile and hatred to hurtle you headlong into the speaker cabinet. Annihilation and self-actualization align in the aphorism-cum-lyric-cum-song-title, "Destruction of a Person Builds Character"--which reads like an inspirational invective from Charlie Manson.

But SJR doesn't stop at simple dark profundity: social philippics on topics like HIV/AIDS ("The Horror") and Islamic jihad ("Personal Insult") give testament to why the American people are "the most pissed-off motherfuckers in the world"--a macho-sophomoric identity George Jr. can dig. Affirmations of faith and strength also spike A Lethal Dose: "My god beats the fuck out of your god." And what Ritual's complete without invoking Manson or Satan? Namedroppers...it's embarrassing, really.)

As the roadside Black Mass revival, "Stealing a Page or Two from Armed and Radical Pagans" prophesies, "a heathen's war...ahead." So, load up on guns, you pagans and punks! Superjoint Ritual, Strapping Young Lad and Full Blown Chaos perform at the House of Blues Aug. 29, 8 p.m.--Chad Lietz