Benji Hughes has a knack for making the kinds of songs that people don’t want in their heads. As a jingle writer, the North Carolina musician set Captain Morgan’s skeezy "Got a Little Captain in You" slogan to music, penned tunes for Verizon and GE, and assisted in giving Nelly’s "Ride Wit Me" a cereal-themed makeover for a Honey Nut Cheerios commercial ("ay, must be the honey!"). For some artists, this advertising work might serve as an interesting bit of trivia—no more relevant to their music than any other day job. But Hughes’ frequently silly Songs in the Key of Animals really does sound like the work of somebody who ghostwrote a jam for a cartoon bee.
Animals is Hughes’ follow-up to 2008’s A Love Extreme, a double album packed tight with Beck-esque party rock, wry AM pop, and piano-based love songs of varying degrees of sincerity. That record was a labor of love, and for those who could get on board with Hughes’ detached sense of humor—a big qualifier, to be sure—it was generous with its charms, proof that beyond his bearded-goofball shtick, this guy could actually write a song. Animals doesn't have nearly so much to prove, and it shows. Hughes wrote the album on the spot in the studio, and he makes no qualms about the fact he’s just fucking around for much of it.
A parade of animal puns, "Peacockin' Party" starts the record with a *Midnite Vultures-*on-a-budget strut and introduces some of the many giggly backup singers who shadow Hughes throughout the record. "Why are we here?" they sing, before answering their own question: "For a good time." Especially in its opening stretch, the record is paced like an episode of vintage sketch show "Laugh-In"—a succession of zany conversational snippets and surrealist injections that often seem to amuse the performers more than the audience. It's fun if you're on its wavelength and obnoxious if you aren't.
On the electro-pop farce "Girls Love Shoes," Hughes’ chorus of women offer the preface that they aren’t only into shoes—they’re also into boys, yoga, dancing, and the beach—but the track mostly just riffs off its title. And like a lot of Hughes’ songs, it’s hard to pinpoint precisely what the joke is. Is he mocking women for their vanity? Presumably not, because Meshell Ndegeocello is one of the women singing on the track, and that's not something she would get behind. Yet for listeners less privy to Hughes’ intentions, it’s easy to walk away with that impression. In general, the women that populate Hughes’ world aren’t very complicated. "Sometimes I just want a cupcake," one professes on "Fall Me in Love." "I'm always looking for a good time," another responds dryly. So, yes, Animals technically passes the Bechdel test—but it takes some shortcuts.
Though the album runs just 41 minutes, Hughes split it into two CDs for its physical release. On its mellower second half, Hughes dials down the funk, reins in his backing singers, and starts crooning in a low, Stephin Merritt register as he turns toward matters of the heart. Even in this less jocular mode, though, the songs feel more like early sketches than finished works. The instrumental "Song for Nancy" is six minutes of pleasant piano and not much else, a solid foundation for a track that’s never built on. The old cliché about double albums is that most could be greatly improved if edited down to one disc, but that doesn’t hold true here. Animals is an anomaly: a two-disc set without enough solid material for even a single LP.
