Band : Albert Christmas Squirrel
Album Reviewed : Weeeeee!
Produced By : Threebrain

Occasionally, someone comes along essentially lacking in ability to play an instrument, and not even that musically gifted, who just hits on a good feel, stumbles across a notion they enjoy, that they know works for whatever reason, or maybe that they don’t care works, and just do because it makes ‘em happy and the poor sufferers exposed to their creation be damned. To my eye, the person or people responsible for Albert Christmas Squirrel fall into this category. (A friend of mine was kind enough to point out that this description sounds a lot like my website, saving Three Brain the trouble of making this observation, should they ever learn of this review. To such comments, I merely reply,"Shut the fuck up!"

The music? It’s basically one guy who knows how to play a guitar moderately well. It’s not that bad, as it were, it’s just nothing that you couldn’t get any idiot you know who can play a guitar to mimic. I can’t be certain that he actually compresses the music or not, but that would explain how he gets the chipmonkish high voice and why his acoustic sounds kind of like a banjo. The lyrics? They’re pretty simple and rely a lot on themes that are both strange and simplistic, with the appropriate level of pointless cursing and references to excrement and sexual organs in them. Go ahead, ask me why I like this....this thing masquerading as music.

I dunno. Maybe it’s just done right. Maybe it’s for the same reasons that I, of all people, enjoyed watching Jay and Silent Bob Strike Back even though it didn’t deserve it. Maybe it’s because the guy just manages to hover around major chord structures that appeal to me while keeping his themes simple but funny. The inane little flash animations certainly help.

The first song I heard, and kind of their ‘big hit’, is ‘Wheeeeeeeeee’. Sung at mach 5 speeds, really a lyric pace that makes R.E.M.’s ‘End of the World As We Know It’ sound like it’s sung at 40 beats per minute, ‘wheeeee’ is just a, well, fuck, these songs only last about thirty seconds apiece and they make no sense. You can’t explain them. It’s about people who go ‘Wheeeeeeeee!’ (the exclamation of excitement, not the act of urinating, I THINK) or something. But it’s hilarious. It’s the energy, it’s the speed and drive in the song (or that you think is in the song), oh, fuck it, I like the music because it’s hilarious, fast and childish. It makes me feel young again, and I don’t mean like an old man thinking he’s twenty, I mean like a snobbish Gen-Xer feeling like he’s eight and just learned what the words cock and pussy meant. That’s what you feel like when you hear this music. You want to run down the street and shout at some passing car, "hey, you COCK! Hey PUSSY, I’M TALKING TO YOU" and then run off giggling with your friends.

The best, though, the best song, the one that must be heard, is the ABC song, which is your classic ‘a’ is for, ‘b’ is for song (except that they mess the alphabet up a bit) only instead of bothering with words, they just sound out absurd and hilarious sound effects, like ‘a’ is for AAAAAAAAAHHHH!!!, ‘b’ is for blblblblblblblblblblb, ‘c’ is for cha cha cha cha cha and so on. Once again everything is just screamed out in a high pitched voice to a light but upbeat little rhythm guitar taking up the background with neat, even cute little animations going on as the letters are introduced. More than ever, you feel like an innocent, an innocent kid, an innocent wild kid, that just learned what’s so good about being bad. But bad like a dumb little kid. Albert Christmas Squirrel is everything good about being a dumb little kid.

To my knowledge, the only way you’re gonna get the album or see the flash animations with the music is to go to http://www.threebrain.com/