#1 is the My Pal God debut for Eyeball Skeleton, which features gradeschoolers JJ and Charlie Brown rocking the bass, guitar, and vocals with a drum machine and guitar assist from their dad. Gimmick? Ah, maybe. But if you put rags in your ears it sounds a little like the Coachwhips.
Eyeball Skeleton's songs nick little pieces of rock history's past 30 or so years, hashing out enough of a guitar line or melody to support JJ and Charlie's antsy gang vocals. Run the water while listening to the instrumental "Redfish" and it's Electr-O-Pura-era Yo La Tengo covering Dinosaur Jr.'s "Start Choppin'". "The Bouncing Apes" picks out what's essentially an indie pop progression. Still, the song's really just a reason to make a truckload of goofy monkey noises, and there's nothing wrong with that. Throughout #1 JJ and Charlie sing as if they absolutely cannot wait to get to the next lyric. But give our junior achievers a break-- you'd be excited too if your next line rhymed "really spooky" with "kind of pooky." That line's from "Spooky Mummy Case", a trash-rock ditty with a name you can just see oozing down your projection screen TV in bulbous Hanna-Barbera orange. A madcap pace, ancient runes, disembodied mummy sound effects-- "Mummy Case" is a better remake of the Scooby-Doo cartoons than anything starring Matthew Lillard and a CG pooch.
Some assembly has certainly been required for Eyeball Skeleton. The nine songs on this debut are simplistic, even rudimentary. But they're also crafty with a hook, and use every single trick of the lo-fi recording trade-- scraggly electric guitars matched by a generic drum machine beats, using the space underneath a faltering vocal to add character and depth, releasing #1 on an pedigreed indie. So it's likely Bill Brown, JJ and Charlie's dad, deserves a hand. Hearing that, some will again point to the half-deflated Mylar gimmickry balloon. Yes, as if Eyeball Skeleton's trajectory from living room performances to local college radio sensations to gigs on "Pancake Mountain" to sharing roster space with Drums & Tuba and French Kicks just has to be some sort of indie rock cashflow conspiracy. Right. Because that's how evil geniuses with big glasses and tight T-shirts spend their time. Of course Brown helped his sons out with arrangements-- they aren't even old enough to buy Rated T video games. Clamors for validity aside, #1 is a pleasant summertime lark. And if that's all it is, then that's all it is. The title track's muddy riff (it's slowed-down from vintage DC hardcore) is the perfect frame for JJ and Charlie's layered harmonies, and their lyrics about skeletons on bicycles and boogey men are more charming than an entire platoon of lovelorn twee-pop charm police. At the very least their "Flat Top Vampire" will be the jam at your local iPod shuffle night.
