Labels: File 13
Review by: Martin Brown
Atom and his luscious hotchpotch of electronic skulduggery and audio horseplay returns for five songs of unabated sonic japery. ‘Huzzah!’ quoth the ostentatious reviewer.
You need to get this for the first song, basically. It’s possibly the best Atom’s ever done. The title is ‘I’m Downright Amazed at What I Can Destroy With Just a Hammer’. It is the most perfect Atom song you can imagine, merging his hilarious lyrics, amazing songwriting, quirky instrumentation and an entire 3 minutes or so of just wanting to throw yourself around like a kind of rampantly enamoured farmyard animal.
That’s not to belittle the rest of the songs here, they’re all fantastic. ‘Fraudulent’ is the weakest, and it’s unfortunate it follows the bliss of ‘.Hammer’. ‘Wonderman’ is excellent, and very similar to a lot of the stuff on his amazing last album ‘Redefining Music’. A super singalong chorus with some heavy metal chugga guitar introduced into the action is a wonderful finish to a great track. ‘Sebastian in Nigeria’ is a ballad of a young man’s exploits in the Sahara and the Nigeria Republic; a dreamy, almost indie-rock addition to the Atom stable. And finishing is a cover of AMFM’s ‘Head Gone Vertical’, a good song done well, but nothing on his covers of Madonna’s ‘Open Your Heart’ and Fugazi’s ‘Waiting Room’.
A great record from a consistently brilliant artist. Get it, dance, do stupid faces and read comics. I did. And look what happened to me. Yes. Exactly.