Step lively folks....now then, we like to call this the "Big Wall of Words" because....well, basically, its a big wall of words--words people have written or otherwise expressed about Regular Einstein. Please, take a moment to walk along the wall and read....

• The Village Voice
• The Aquarian Weekly
• Milk Magazine
• Back to the Living Room

esident genius of this outfit, formerly Teenagers For Nixon, singer-songwriter Paula Carino theorizes relativity between bopped-up punk and haunting rock, between single motherhood and the beat and escaping gravity altogether, first leaning into her band, then bouncing into the ether with confidence and smart humor. Winner, best lyric of 1996: "Check the spectrum for Doppler changes in hue/Find I've drifted toward a slower shade of blue (stuck in this quadrant)."

ey, this is bright, tough pop from the other side of the tracks. Songwriter Paula Carino highlights her dark yet not dreary world vision with a tight, talented band to back her up. Cool--the thing works well.

"Mary Baker Eddy" is a humorous spoof, prominent with quirky pop hooks aplenty. Creepier changes--from tense, nervous chords to flowing-gown airiness--accent the bizarre theme: "I've got those nightmare legs that don't move." "I Want Mars" finds them groovy like Edie Brickell but not as hippie flaky [I should hope not!--ed.], although this does get pleasantly trippy, full of echo and reverb. "Terry Cloth Mother"* is a fluid arrangement, full of harmonic [illegible word--ed.] and gentle chord changes to tell the Psych 101 tale of monkeys and surrogate oms. "Still In Ether" is much more boisterous and cranked than anything else on this record. When you consider the subject matter--a child is taken away from its mother immediately after birth--it almost sounds too happy.

Modern life really is complicated. Look at how involved and tortured our pop music has become. It's doesn't take a rocket scientist, you know.

nybody stands a halfway decent chance of being able to write a song about stuff like love, death, angst, and movie-theater blowjobs. After all, these are common, everyday experiences (most of them). And so, writing a catchy lyrical hook about these ideas is relatively unchallenging. But writing a good song whose chorus is "I'm Mary Baker Eddy" - and making a line like "the relationship between God and Man" sound not only musical, but amusing as well - well, that's a bit more difficult.

So Regular Einstein's Paula Carino deserves high praise for her achievements - which also include never once causing the listener to worry if Carino's being clever or serious (she's both). Though the two bands sound almost nothing alike, Regular Einstein shares with Guided by Voices the potentially annoying (to others) ability to write songs that make folks helplessly sing odd-duck lines like "Mom's on the roof* and we can't get her down" out loud in public places. Not catching a cold in a room full of coughing, sneezing first-graders in winter is easier than avoiding the hooks on this EP.

But these songs aren't only a barrel of laughing monkeys - like Swiss army knives, they feature more than one kind of hook. Sure, you can laugh at the idea of Mom up on the roof - but if Mom really was up on the roof, that'd be a bit less funny, wouldn't it. Same with a line such as "I'm like a monkey / clinging to a cloth-covered wire" ("Terry Cloth Mother"*) - the image and comparison amuse, but the underlying tone is barbed, the current of regret, abandonment, and rage left only slightly covered, like those bare wires beneath the tattered terry cloth. In fact, absence and loss color every song on this disc - most nakedly in the wrenching "Still in Ether": "I was still in ether / when I signed a shaky form. / They carted him away / right after he was born." And Mary Baker Eddy, outwardly gloating over her "eminent friend," ultimately blames herself for everything: "I thought that I was ill / but it was just my will."

The two-guitar/bass/drums arrangements are terse, sparse, and punchy, the lyrics full of careful, spot-on character sketches, like the brother in "Mom's on the Roof"* with his "horn-rim glasses/ the kind that Jimmy Reilly wore / just before you beat him up / and took his sneakers" - but their wit is more than smart-ass cleverness. So these songs are all about love, death, and angst after all - that they're also bitingly witty is the icing on the arsenic-laced cake. Even more difficult than writing songs with irregular ideas is writing a good song about the usual ideas. Paula Carino's done it not just once but seven times.

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