This Is Loungecore
Written: Jan 27 '06
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Product Rating:
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Pros: original, entertaining spin on some of rock's darker moments
Cons: not an album for those who insist on taking their rock music seriously
The Bottom Line: The cover says it all - a few compact disks, some cassettes with the tape spewing out, and a pair of bright red panties, all shoved into a blender.
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| DrFaustus's Full Review: Hanging with the Balls by The Balls |
Of all the musical trends that have emerged in the last few years, nothing has struck a more resounding chord with me than the whole mash-up phenomenon. It's still hasn't emerged from the "underground movement" phase to break into the mainstream, but the concept is elegantly simple. Resourceful music engineers take the vocals from one well-known recording and dub them over the instrumental tracks from some completely different tune. Creative mixers have crafted such musical chimeras as Paperback Believer (with the vocals from Paperback Writer and the instrumentals from I'm a Believer), I Wanna Dance with Some Bono (vocals from I Wanna Dance with Somebody and instrumentals from New Year's Day), and Kasbah Wonder (vocals from Uptight Alright and instrumentals from Rock the Kasbah), to name but a few. Even when these musical mixes skew towards the truly bizarre, as with Turkey in My Humps (vocals from My Humps and instrumentals from the old 1930's instrumental Turkey in the Straw with a little bit of Bingo Was His Name-O thrown in for good measure), the results are always interesting and intriguing, juxtaposing two or more musical styles that normally have no business sharing the stage.
The problem is, mash-ups aren't exactly the most legal of recordings, as least according to the letter of current copyright laws. Since the DJ's that mix these are cobbling together pieces of recordings made by other people, it's not uncommon for the major labels to send out unpleasant cease and desist letters to the venues that distribute these songs.
Enter Storm Large and her Portland-based band The Balls. They've found a way to capitalize on the whole mash-up phenomenon without having to delve into any of that questionable legal territory. After all, if you're working in the confines of a band, there's no need to splice up other artists' recordings. Just perform a few cover songs, letting the singer sing the vocals to one song while the rest of the band does their thing with a completely different tune. Voila. Instant mash-up with no legal muss and fuss. Just pure, mischievous musical fun.
And that's how we get to the majority of the tunes on their album Hanging with the Balls. Just listen to Abba-Gadda-Davida and you'll have a condensed version of what The Balls are all about. The song opens up with the all too familiar organ riffs from Inna-Gadda-Davida, copying the original closely enough that we can almost hear the faint footsteps of the radio DJ sneaking away for a bathroom break. A scant fifteen seconds through that riff, though, Large's breathy, smoky vocals muscle their way to the forefront as she coos "If you change your mind, I'm the first in line, honey I'm still free, take a chance on me." And from there, the band continues through all the solid, old-school goth rock intensity that Iron Butterfly demands with Large slinking through all the pop glimmer and sheen required for Take a Chance on Me. Large even drops in a few lines from Dancing Queen for good measure, belting out the cheesily sentimental lines without a trace of self-consciousness. It's a truly bizarre mixture, what with the moody, gothic rock music and the sweeping vocals that glide from soft cooing to soulful belting, just like a Vegas cabaret act. The resulting style, dubbed "loungecore" by the band, may seem a little tricky to fathom, but The Balls play with such unselfconscious, unbridled enthusiasm, that it's hard not to get sucked in to the fun.
But Abba-Gadda-Davida is by no means the only bizarre musical novelty cocktail served up on the album. Take Star Spangled Pushernoia - the soulful funk of Curtis Mayfield's Pusherman serving as the backdrop for our national anthem with some of Mayfield's lyrics sneaking in and inviting a few lines of The Kink's Destroyer along for the party. Van Ministry - the dark lyrical nihilism of Ministry's Land of Rape and Honey paired with the chorus and the jazzy cool musical arrangements of Van Morrison's Moondance to keep things swingin'. In the Light Wedding - the hard rock edge of Led Zeppelin's In the Light arranged for bass, drums, and electric piano, with the punktastic vocal snarls of Billy Idol's White Wedding blended in. There's something decidedly tongue-in-cheek about the musical mélange presented here, but The Balls take these absurd musical creations and play them straight, with nary a hint of sarcasm (on the surface at least), just like the greatest of lounge acts out there.
Hanging with the Balls features plenty of these mash-up type tunes that blend two or more familiar songs, but there are more than a few straight-up covers of individual songs. Well, as straight-up as a band that bills itself as "loungecore" can be, that is. Anarchy en Español recasts the Sex Pistols hit as a piano pounding rocker in the stlye of Elvis' '68 comeback special, with Spanish lyrics to complete the surreal package. The surfer punk of The Cramps' Can Your Pussy Do the Dog turns in a boogie woogie swing tune oozing with sex kitten vocals, while N.I.B. transforms the Black Sabbath number into a spicy latin dance number. The Balls turn both Cheap Trick's I Want You to Want Me and Olivia Newton John's Hopelessly Devoted into slow, sensual torch songs wrapped around languid, sweeping piano arrangements. Perhaps the most goofily entertaining moment on the album, though, comes in form of the quadruple cover medley Deathrock Stomp. Large wraps her formidable vocal chops around the goth rock lyrics of Bella Lugosi's Dead, Happy House, Head Like a Hole, and Just Like Heaven as the rest of the band leaps through the hoops of the acrobatic cabaret show arrangement. The result feels like the contemporary hit medleys found on most Weird Al albums squeezed down into a minute and a half, but it's a helluva fun ride.
It'd be easy to listen to The Balls and write them off as a novelty act, barely worthy of attention. I won't deny the novelty side of the such an implication, but the band is certainly worth of second, third, and further subsequent listens. The self defined genre of "loungecore" may be hard to take seriously, but the style lends the band a cartoonish charm that can't fail to elicit a smirk, even from those who may be upset that they're slaughtering some sacred cows. They're fine reminder that even in the world of modern rock, a good laugh, especially at ourselves, can do wonders when the everyday mundanities of life start to get us down.
Recommended:
Yes
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Epinions.com ID:
DrFaustus
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Location: the Lake Michigan shoreline
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I can't help being a big fan of the esoteric and the obscure
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