33 rebellions per minute
"They don't care if I'm a 1-way mirror, they aren't frightened by my cold exterior"
1994
Boingo, S/T
Dropping the obviously-silly "Oingo" prefix that had haunted them to the feeble DARK AT THE END OF
THE TUNNEL end of their '80's career, Boingo regrouped in '94 ready to abandon their increasingly
uniform sound and try for artistic greatness. Which, to save me from further temptation to awed adjectives,
I'll say now I think they delivered, unveiling 11 songs in 11 different styles over 75 minutes of play, all of
which strike me as in the good-to-brilliant range. The leadoff song "Insanity" is a cinematic soundscape
opening with brass chording designed for the opening credits of a slasher flick, then starting up a
spine-tingling marimba loop; it builds and ebbs and builds up further over 8 minutes in an unfair (but
momentarily quite effective) sneering/ scared blast at televised religion, with an undead-sounding children's
chorus and a perfect implacable rhythm. "Hey" ("I've got a commentary without much to say. And all these
damn kids drive me crazy everyday") also reaches 8 minutes, with verses in pristine 10,000 Maniacs-ish
folk, an in-yo-face chorus that's part Red Hot Chili Peppers and part Nirvana, and a preposterous little
Queen-like falsetto coda. "Mary" and "Lost Like This" arrange string quartets (the first overblown but
getting away with it, the later lost and tense) with the proficiency of a man (Danny Elfman) who earns his
major living writing music for TV (especially "the Simpsons") and the movies. "Pedestrian Wolves" is a
loud and catchy slab of guitar-funk, a lust paean with the genre-atypical undertones of "raised by suburban
lions, out in the jungle. We really like to run in packs, and I like that. When we hunt, we all function with
one mind. Our collective predications are as sharp as the razor in my pocket, and as dull as the ice melting
slowly in my glass. My only love is the love of oblivion, in a dark room with a couple of pedestrian
wolves". "Spider" is minor-key synth-guitar pop that owes clear debt to Echo + the Bunnymen's "Killing
Moon" but with a more mainstream sense of momentum. "War Again" is similar but but rhythmically heavy,
a belated Gulf War protest and an early protest of whatever's next: "Here we go watching CNN, the
adrenaline rushes through my veins. Don't you know it's a feel-good show, electronic bliss, it's a video, a
video". "Change" is a 16-minute showpiece switching smoothly amongst sensitive folk-pop, frantic
drum-hammering rock, late-Beatles studio-effect pop, and cocktail piano. "Helpless" closes out with an
accordian and the sung rant of a defeated megalomaniac, also featuring the line "Helplessly trapped in a
body I'm sure should have never been mine/ I'm sure that my real one is doing just fine"; I will have it
played at my funeral.
BOINGO doesn't cohere as an album, although Elfman's sense of how to structure and pace an
individual song is ultimately distinctive, and the melodies stick to his vocal range. But like an ambitiously
varied mix tape, what saves it, or not, is your ability to enjoy the individual songs as themselves. I hope you
do.
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