Brainiac
Bonsai Superstar

If I were a nerd-oriented American, one of those who reviews even their underwear ("IMHO, I think my underwear are underrated") and I enjoy reading them for their undeniable mastery in condensing impressions ("Amazing", "Cute", "Sorry you’re dismissed") using strings of characters with cryptic charm (IMPO, ROTFLMAO, AFAIK) and phonetics eerily akin to the sounds my dog used to make when he performed his ritual of liberating vomit ("Thumbs up for the vomit, dude!"), well, if I were one of "those", I certainly couldn’t say that Brainiac are an "underrated" band.

The problem (so to speak, "obviously") with these wave-noisers from the Nineties is the fact that they are not "rated" at all.

Try the treacherous Google, you’ll encounter in order: A) A supervillain with a telekinesis hobby. B) A TV show that explains the 101 uses of your urine ("That gives me the creep"). C) A Mexican trash movie with a tongue-split baron returning as a brain-sucking entity ("Truth to be told: Chano Urueta is not a completely incompetent director").

It’s hard to understand for me (and perhaps for that completist American who can’t sleep unless he votes "Apocalypto" on IMDB) how the degenerate cocktail of ramshackle Zappa-style anthems ("Sexual Frustration"), ballads haunted by melancholic moogs ("Fucking With The Altimiter"), noise-stomping tracks ("To The Baby Counter"), and robotic rides ("Hot Metal Dobermanns") wasn’t the most downed drink of 1994 ("Thumbs down for alcoholism, man").

Too many ingredients, perhaps? (Ate in a hurry/ Ate too much, huh?).

But it’s precisely in this overdose of styles, notes, and hisses, the impression of facing people who could write hits with their left hand but couldn’t care less, that one could (if accustomed to such shores) grasp the greatness of the team of Ohio eccentrics (and of Bonsai Superstar: "IMHO, their masterpiece").

Take "Hands Of The Genius" with its malicious bass, a song that if cleaned of the four hands of cacophonies with which it was smeared could compete with any alternative-rock single of the era. Or "Flypaper", with its "brushed" drum intro and a refrain that would even be catchy if not ridiculed by a tormented Donald Duck. Listen to "Radio Apeshot": guitar lines in a perpetually-tilted pinball machine, a "crampsianly" primitive rhythm section, a melodious chorus emerging only from the third/fourth listen onward.

Brainiac are Pavement with "I love mom" tattooed on their forearm. The Jesus Lizard on the Craziest Airplane in the World. They are Truman’s Water who learned to play, the Stranglers who forgot how to. Cop Shoot Cop with two Commodore 64s instead of two basses. Pere Ubu flunked in the Philosophy of Language. DEVO with liver pain and halitosis.

A handful among LPs, singles, tracks on compilations (the epic "Go, freaks, go!" contained in Jabberjaw Vol.II besides that Internationale Ep produced by the much-esteemed Kim Deal) and just when things were getting interesting, a ridiculous (and unfair and painful) accident that in May 2007 took away Timmy Taylor, his voices filtered through delirious vocoders, and his doped synthesizers.

No more metal-dogs, human-bonsai, 70-kilo men, and Cadillacs for Juicy to ride on.

Only reminiscences of some apathetic adolescence saved by a handful of dissonant notes and irrational chants that would do well in heavy rotation on Tron’s radios.

And the image of a nerd-oriented, obsessive and knowledgeable American, who can’t decide whether to put that damn thumb up or not.