Labels: No Idea Records
Review by: Andy Malcolm
Surely everyone has heard of this guy by now? This here LP is a compilation of various 7″. And fun it is too.
Oh go on then. We’ve never reviewed an Atom release, so here is a brief synopsis – a Jewish guy. A sequencer. Some very, very, very strange songs. Whether this amuses you or not depends on your sense of humour and novelty thresh-hold. I dig it. If the premise of a song about the crapness of the Metric system, or suing the Philadelphia public transport organisation because a gate on their property hit you in the face doesn’t really grab you, then maybe you oughta give this a miss.
Highlights include four songs where Atom got a band together to play some of his stuff with a bit of a punk edge. Apparently they called themselves Lobster Mobster (awesome name!), and 2 people showed up. Then proceeded to heckle. Some of these heckles are audible on the CD, a very disinterested guy goes “Stop playing” at the end of a song. Atom sings a bunch lyrics from a Dag Nasty song in the middle of another. I only just spotted that. There’s also a song about a girl who is just a head. No body. Really. At the end of the live stuff the disinterested guy says “Go away. Go home”. The live material was gathered on a single that was put out under the name of Atom And His Rockage, which buys more favour with me, as unnecessarily suffixng -age to words is good.
Sample lyrics are like “So that means there’s a 40% chance that one of the guys in Pantera likes men. So I’d say it’s safe to say that more metal guys are homosexual, that may frustate the gay community”. Or how about the one about being obsessed by Enya? Or what the Jewish communitee is really doing on Christmas day.
Well. I dunno, I dig this. The electro pop stuff with the sequencer could have theoretically gone seriously wrong, but Atom carries it off in style, it’s so upbeat and daft sounding. And the way he sings. Dear oh dear. So – novelty record. If you take music seriously, you’ll despise Atom. If your brain is mush, you’ll love it.