Did anyone catch Bobby Conn's article in Vice Magazine about how he represents the last frontier of rock star sexuality? You know, the one that goes on and on about how impotence is symbolic of the last "fuck you" left in rock n' roll (the final frontier being "I'm gay")? Well, in case you didn't get around to hearing this guy's debut, the utterly manic Rise Up, this is how you know Bobby Conn: a man with a lovingly warped obsession with himself and his limp, shriveled place in it.
Conn is less a musician than the leader of an elaborate musical sideshow. He gets outrageously talented members of the brain rock set (Jim O'Rourke, Julie Pomerleau) to partake in his frantic funk orchestra. He screams and whines and moans across the studio, sometimes spewing about revolution, sometimes moaning about wanting to see everyone's choda. Some see divinity in this amalgamation of toasted insanity with three kinds of melted cheese. Others listen to this balladry mixed with 70's jazz- fusion workouts and tsk like their slutty stepmothers.
But having received two Bobby Conn records from the Pitchfork Ass Separator Dispersion Service, I must confess that I've had enough. Llovessonngs is a four- song EP which continues in the anything- goes vein of his last record. But whereas Rise Up was saved by some sort of coherent vision (if you can call fin- de- siecle hormonal nihilism a vision), Llovessonngs is too brief to make the impression it wants. Ranging from "Hair" outtakes like the Bobby Conn original "Free Love" to the whiny, orchestral death balladry of "Without You" (a cover), Conn is simply too sweaty to sleep beside. The last track "Maria B" is a standout, however, propelled by a pulsating percussion break and Conn's silky falsetto.
Regardless of this opinion, one is forced to consider Bobby Conn on one's own. Conn's crap is urgent and odd enough to at least demand your attention, if not your adoration. For us, Llovessonngs only had the former.
