Every Tuesday, the music business doles out armies of debut albums doomed to spend an eternity collecting dust in record store used bins. The truth is not that most of these lonely relics of rock and roll were arbiters of cultural shame, so awful that no one could possibly want to listen to them, but that they simply ride the middle ground between abysmal and worthwhile so well that their existence is simply not worth noting. Following in this infamous line of harmless stereo-friendly pap comes Mark Duplass' stab at 80s nostalgia (as channeled through the influence of Spoon, Elvis Costello, and The Get-Up Kids) with his band's self-titled debut as Volcano, I'm Still Excited!!
Reportedly named for the Tom Hanks driven cult flop, Joe Versus the Volcano, Mark Duplass started VISE!! after he was diagnosed with severe tendonitis in both of his arms, forcing him to trade in his years of guitar playing and take up the organ. However, while the circumstances of his band's fruition prove to be somewhat out of the ordinary, the music on this self-titled debut is anything but unpredictable.
Despite that Volcano's idiosyncratic line-up is constituted by a Casio organ, a guitar, and a double bass drum, and that Duplass had been enrolled in music composition classes around the time of forming the band, the album sounds remarkably trapped in the conventionally adolescent and nostalgic-obsessed garments of emo. In fact, for all intents and purposes, Volcano sound like a less estrogen-infused version of Polyvinyl's other organ-centric outfit, Mates of State. The album's opener "2nd Gun" bounces along on a bed of cheap Moog chords and telecaster sheen, while Duplass drawls out painfully clumsy lines like, "I miss you, Kate, and that shit hurts." A line like this should be delivered with a wry bitterness, or a quick wit, not dripping with so much Hallmark heartache and banality that it could carry a scene from The O.C. "2nd Gun", however, is a mild offender compared with the high school stalker ode "New Brad", which features the album's most prosaic lyrics in lines like, "I'm standing in your driveway but you're not home yet/ I've been waiting here since last night.../ Your window wasn't open like you promised.
However, many a great song has featured utterly imbecilic lyrics, and Volcano are more than capable of kicking out some prime cheese when it counts. Both "In Green" and "Fisticuffs", while completely inane, showcase memorable enough anthem-lite melodies; although having these songs frustratingly stuck in your head is as close as recorded sound gets to the baffling power that The Real World/Road Rules Challenge has over my Tivo.
The real problem with Volcano, though, is not only the fact that they aren't really doing anything inventive with their music, but that the music itself is utterly forgettable. There's not a single moment of genuine un-sentimental or mature emotion (or at least a scenario that hasn't previously appeared in a John Hughes film), and the glut of sixteen tracks seem to pass by in a glaze-eyed hum of 80s nostalgia of Casio watches, Delorians and aerobics. Of course, for a band that seems so obsessed with the trappings of adolescence in the Reagan era, what could be a more fitting place for nostalgia than the used bin?
