Icky Boyfriends are an affront to the goodness of good taste and a challenge to the decency of all decent people. They're a flaming pile of rubber dog shit fulminating on the front porch, and our instinct is to put it out, turn it off, shout "get off the fucking stage!" as exasperated Mudhoney fans supposedly demanded during a characteristically Icky opening set. But then, with the crowd thinned out and gag reflexes successfully repressed, the early-90s San Francisco noisefuck trio's perverse, incongruously vulnerable charm reveals itself like the too-familiar special sauce in your fish taco.
Overdue 61-track retrospective A Love Obscene compiles the Ickies' two albums plus assorted shits/giggles, all otherwise out of print. With amateurishness to spare, Afro'd frontman Jon Swift supervises start-stop, off-key ruminations on spermicidal jelly ("nothing kills passion quicker than a mouthful"), environmental paranoia ("there's fuck-all you can really do"), and New Kids on the Block (with Donnie impressions!). Swift is equally unstinting in his praise, typically reserved for Mission burritos, dental dams, and a woman named Kate ("it must be 'cause your name isn't Katharine, Kathy, Kathleen... Catwoman... Keith Richards..."). Guitarist Shea Bond flails at nursery-rhyme riffs beneath hideous vacuum-cleaner distortion, while drummer Anthony Bedard sloppily rehearses "Wipe Out". Tape hiss guests.
What separates Icky Boyfriends from joke-punks like Circle Jerks or Dwarves-- aside from admittedly "no-fidelity" recording-- is a scared-stupid sincerity akin to Modern Lovers. "Nervous Guy" is the guard-down naïf-rock Rosetta Stone placing the other songs in proper context. "Maybe we'll be somewhere eating spaghetti/ And you won't even mind if I spill some of your tea", Swift muses, practically blushing. The awkward tenderness of "Nervous Guy" and "Our Love Song" helps the Ickies get away with blasphemies: the title of the collection, say, or a typically tuneless, yet affecting, take on John Lennon's "Love". Admiring giggles further absolve them of ripping off the Kinks' "She's Got Everything" in an ode to masochism ("Toenails") and the MC5's "Kick Out the Jams" for abortion-clinic jokes ("Closet").
Inevitably, A Love Obscene contains an imperfection or two (the Icky metal of "Sycamore St.", the "Hotel California" bonus track). Yes, the Ickies' world is self-indulgent and masturbatory. Nevertheless, their sound is a fitting precursor to the hilarious yet obvious shoutings of Art Brut and the schizophrenic hyper-noise of labelmates like Deerhoof and Bunnybrains. Adopting a line from the band's hilarious art-rock lampoon "Frank: A Rock Opera", Bedard gave his post-Ickies film the title I'm Not Fascinating. Any otherwise-decent person who has ever slowed down near a car crash might beg to differ.
