Brainiac
Smack Bunny Baby

THE REVIEW

-Honey, what are you making for lunch?
-Vegetable lasagna.
-And that blender?
-I blend the vegetables, so the kids will eat them too.
“Hissing Prigs In Static Couture” plays through the headphones. The blender noise doesn't bother him. Saturday morning.

Disturbances are part of the harmony. Irregular but catchy songs. A hysterical, sometimes subnormal singing does the rest. Hints of improbable falsetto, even cyber-sucked voices. Collapsing fugues and bizarre shifts in rhythm. Grated, pellet-filled guitars; fuzz combined with octaves, now high, now low. A retro synth, eccentric to say the least. Hysteria, madness, insanity. Sly, crooked forms subsume the urgency of punk, hard rock excursions, the cerebral quality of certain new wave, making this indie material singularly loopy. It's 1993. A year illustrating the rigorous honesty of Brainiac.

So, coordinates: Dayton, Ohio, a cradle of idiosyncratic talents; unsurprisingly, Devo and Pere Ubu are tutelary deities. They leave the Butthole Surfers behind and that's not ideal. But it worked out well for them. The influence of the Pixies, against which it's harmful to vaccinate. A bit of sonic youth in the strings of guitarist Michelle “Bodine” O'Dean (who will later be overthrown by the much more scatterbrained John Schmersal), the reckless genius of the leader, Timmy Taylor, in singing (what singing?), on the Moog and incantations.

Chaos and harmony coexist as much as technical skills and amateurism. The nature is goofy (they know they don't know how crazy they are). The norm is speed, shifting. More so, being shifted. Here, in “Smack Bunny Baby”, begins the process that, with many (and voluntary) gaps, will lead them to that little wonder of “Bonsai Superstar” (refined title, huh?) and to their masterpiece, “Hissing Prigs In Static Couture”, an impeccable objectification of delirium, where they manage to carry dementia from paroxysm to a state of grace.

Thus, in the debut, they pass from the insane mutant punkabilly of Smack Bunny Baby to the dizzying twists of Cultural Zero (syncopated rhythms, silly chants, gray matter oozing out, equine manure, vintage synths, vehemence and madness, basically a super hit), from the enveloping contortions of Brat Girl (a captivating and elusive melody, corrupted by Tim's stutterings, Tyler Trent’s stray runs, and Juan Monasteiro’s slithering bass) to Anesthetize (absurd, convulsive, exciting, burning, unaesthetic, a spot excellently ticked by Michelle Bodine’s guitar). Panta rei, everything flows in a cheerfully unsettling way. Naturally, the lyrics are explicit and sarcastic (a mention of the title I, Fuzzbot).

If that chaos doesn't yet reign where, from every side, a method unexpectedly emerges, there are already signs of exhilarating greatness. Already, because with the third album (more experimental rock and new wave/post-punk revival), and partially with the subsequent EP produced by Jim O’Rourke, the group will no longer be just a promise.

But the dream shatters. The balances are precarious. Even the harmony crumbles. Just like in their songs.

Timmy Taylor dies in a car accident on May 23, 1997. He was twenty-eight years old.