I've just about had it with smirking hipster insincerity, with twenty-somethings waving around their sense of ironic detachment as though it's a get-out-of-jail-free card to offer, for public consumption, whatever hastily conceived, poorly executed, mentally deficient tripe they happened to throw together between shifts at Starbucks this week. From the grating, mono-dimensional beats to the internet-meme lyrics, Ear Pwr shows utter contempt for both their craft and their audience.
The electronic duo lifts their shtick wholesale from the now-defunct Bis, appropriating the band's cutesy, middle-school fixations and Euro-trash rhythms while losing the punky-guitar accompaniment and, somewhere along the line, any aptitude for songwriting. I could go on endlessly about everything I hate about this band, like how UNC-Asheville music technology graduate Devin Booze creates pounding beats that are both saccharine and aurally abrasive, or how Sarah Reynold's mousy voice fails to hold anything resembling a note, or about the idiotic simpering she has the audacity to pass off as lyrics. I could complain about these things, but that would be missing the point. See, you're not supposed to like Super Animal Brothers III -- not really. This is music with a wink and a nod. “Here's our new ‘album.’ Oh, you hate it? You silly pleb! You didn't take it SERIOUSLY, did you?”
We're a generation that's becoming increasingly reluctant to express honest emotional engagement in art, and all this irony is just a way keeping ourselves at arm's length from our work. How can we be offended by criticism of something that we never made any investment in to begin with? Ear Pwr takes the easy way out, making slipshod music so they can play-pretend at being rock stars without the threat of disparagement, because, after all, their music was never intended to be assessed on its own merits in the first place. Well I, for one, am calling shenanigans. I refuse to believe anyone could make music this obnoxious, this derivative, this plain stupid, and think that it was good.
Trying to get to the end of this album is like crossing a desert (minus the natural beauty). Booze and Reynolds maintain a consistent level of awfulness throughout, but really bring their A-game to songs like the bludgeoningly-repetitive “Sparkly Sweater,” an ode to — what else? — Reynold's favorite shirt. The inanity of her pre-pubescent lyrics reaches a fever pitch on “Cats Is People Too,” “Super Animal Brothers III,” and “Ghostride the Buffalo,” each of which is bracing enough to earn a place on some future playlist used by U.S. troops in extorting intelligence from Gitmo detainees. The only passable song on the entire album is “Future Eyes,” which finds Ear Pwr, for once, un-ironically embracing the late-’90s trance they simultaneously emulate and mock. It helps, too, that it's the only song with lyrics that, while lacking profundity, are at least not half as brazenly terrible as the ones found on the rest of the album.
In the end, Super Animal Brothers III fails not merely because it is a bad album, but because it is a cowardly one. I have more respect for the Stinking Lizavettas, the Seizure Crypts, and the Plushguns of the world; at least they had the courage to suck without hiding behind a knowing wink.
1. Tripodium
2. Beam of Light
3. Super Animal Bros. III
4. Future Eyes
5. Sparkley Sweater
6. Cats Is People Too
7. You Are the Bomb
8. Boys II Volcanoes
9. Jams O Jamz
10. Diamonds Liquor Leather
11. Goofy Award
12. Discover Your Colors
13. Ghostride the Buffalo
14. Mexican Newspaper
15. Epic Suitcase
16. Secret Stars
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