from Delusions of Adequacy
| When I heard that Ruben, the big man with the velvet voice, won American Idol this year, my first thought was how little he looked like what most people would think an American idol should look like. He's not young and sexy, and he doesn't have the dance moves to make you feel a little funny. He just had a great voice, and personality. Score one for the fat kid, I thought. His win, and the fact that the runner-up was a geeky white boy with big ears - seemed a minor victory for every person who doesn't feel they fit into the image of what society prizes most. I suspect that the four members of the band Score One for the Fat Kid don't fit into that area either. They're a math professor, a computer programmer, a bio medical engineer, and a textbook editor. They really like odd time signatures. They include lyrics like "You defy this broken sigh emulsified in your eyes" and "I've held fault at arms length as fragments of our history are all I can savor in the vex of our consummation." I get the sense that these guys have been called geeks before, and I get the sense that they don't care. Call it math-rock if you must, but Score One for the Fat Kid knows how to rock, and that's what really matters. Three of the four members of the band sing, and while it's obvious when the voice changes, all of the singers have unique qualities - they're not the best singers, but their voices fit the songs nicely. From the start, "The Sweetheart's Compass" uses some odd time signatures - the ones that make tapping your foot along really tough - and fast-paced lyrics that even get up to an almost-shout. On "Can You Name These Brain Structures?" it's the fast-paced guitars that provide the complex intellectualism (and lyrics like "today's the day they're handing out brains and I want to get a good one!" help keep up the kind of quirky approach). "Live Was Much Easier When Helmet Was My Favorite Band," in addition to being a great band name, rocks pretty good, loud and fast and with multiple vocalists often getting up to scream level. The complex note-picked guitar mixes with the poppy-rock of "Decrease the Mass and Run Like Hell," one of the most sing-along songs on the album. But all of their styles come together on the excellent "Diary of My Indiana Heart" and "The Creepy Claw Descends on Lower Allston." At times, Score One for the Fat Kid feels like they could be the geeks at high school playing complex music in their parents' garages, except none of the kids in my high school were this talented. And who hasn't rooted for the geeks to make good anyway? All or most of these guys have all served time in other bands reviewed on DOA (Idiot Savant Garde, Andrew Wagner), and they're surprisingly talented. The fact that this album flat-out rocks most of the time helps too. So yeah, the time signatures and guitar playing tend to be precise and detailed in a way most four- or five-chord bands avoid, but that just adds to the album's appeal. Indulge the geek within you - you know you were one at some point. Buy this album and help out guys who deserve it. -- Jeff Marsh |
from Splendid E-Zine
| Quirkiness is one of music's most potentially toxic qualities. Discerning listeners know that when somebody says that a band is quirky, it probably means that the band thinks they're cleverer than they actually are. It certainly means that they try to be "funny", and most "funny" music, well, isn't. Boston's Score One for the Fat Kid are a rarity: a thoroughly quirky band that is almost always entertaining and never annoying. Like early Screeching Weasel and the lighter side of Pavement, Score One for the Fat Kid's sound succeeds because it is unpredictable and legitimately clever. The band's music is an unstable clash of odd, wildly varying time signatures, slippery guitar runs and throaty yelps (courtesy of three of the four members). It certainly does its best to avoid easy genre tagging. The sloppiness smells like indie rock, but the intensity recalls Midwestern emo-faves Braid. The band's expert balance of skill and verve reveals itself again and again. On "Can You Name these Brain Structures?", Doug and Andy W.'s mind-bendingly intricate guitar lines stumble over each other like possessed Slinkies. On the catchy "I Took Down All the X-mas Lights in Somerville and Spelled Out Your Name", their hyperactive wizardry is almost buried in the mix, but the song's blustery, gritty production actually adds to its reckless beauty. "Diary of My Indiana Heart", one of the album's two overtly emo songs, boasts some jarring growls that sound like Mike Judge (of Judge and Youth of Today fame) serenading his girlfriend. Its endearingly shabby execution helps you to forgive the maudlin title, and makes the lovesick lyrics stick. "Decrease the Mass and Run Like Hell" epitomizes the witty, pointedly observant lyrics that so enliven the album. There is candor and cruelty in the song about a woman who "lives alone, in a house with no cats, not a Cathy collection in sight / and when she's lonely she writes poetry on pink paper." The narrator's assessment of her work is harsh and curtly funny: "It sucks, yeah." Don't worry, the derision doled out here is equal-opportunity: we also hear of the preening preppie who'd "rather not talk about his job, 'cause he'd rather be talking about his jazz record collection." Elsewhere, the band slams hipsters and "98-lb. boys with baby T's". The generalizations are amusing, but the namechecking potshots delivered to obvious targets like The Faint, Strokes and White Stripes feel a little too easily won. On tracks like "Julienned" and "Safetyquake", Score One for the Fat Kid prove that affecting, abstract wordplay (i.e. "With the beauty of starfish who explode yet manage to save face, you're infinitely capable with staples, paperclips, gauze and grace") comes to them just as easily as snarky putdowns. I've made it pretty far without discussing the proverbial elephant-in-the-room -- the band's initially off-putting moniker. Cool it, nobody's making fun of fat people; on the contrary, Score One's music is a shambolic celebration of any and all outcasts: the nerds, the ugly and the large, all delivered with a well-earned and reciprocal wink. In a word -- quirky! -- Justin Stewart |
from Calamity Project
| This band's name honestly made me think I was going to get some shitty pop punk band, and the artwork made me think that even more, being of the nautical theme that pop punk bands seem to love so much, so I was a bit apprehensive in listening to this record, because as you all know, pop punk cds often end up as coaster's for my Taco Bell cups (and boy, do I eat lots of Taco Bell). But what I heard here wasn't pop punk at all. It had elements of pop in it, but it was more or less indie rock that did not suck at all. What tends to capture my ear the most is the vocals. there's singing, and then there's screaming and shouting, and it tends to vary between the two, whereas during the quiet parts, vocals are sung, and during the louder parts of this record, you have the screaming. The music is primarily indie. It does get kind of pop sounding at times, and does have that sort of sensibility to it, however, I wouldn't write off this band at all. They definitely are unique sounding, and definitely are not a shitty band at all. They have very addicting songs, and aren't just your same run-of-the-mill indie rock band. If this review doesn't help you at all, find some mp3s. They are on the band's rather interesting website, I do believe. But overall, this is definitely something that is worth checking out. |
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