I was lucky: I was spared the knowledge of Diarrhea Planet's name when I discovered them. Walking into a low-ceilinged club in Austin at this year's South by Southwest, I was assaulted by the sight of six twenty-something guys, all shirtless, seemingly none of them over 5"4, essentially scaling the walls. There were guitars played behind backs, over heads, with teeth. I'm pretty sure three guitar solos were happening at once. The people in the audience looked happier than anyone I'd ever seen. It was only when I tapped someone on the shoulder to find out what this band, this epochal experience, called itself, that I learned the awful truth. It didn't help that the exhilarating song they were blasting out, the fan-favorite encore, was called "Ghost With a Boner".
My experience is a luxury you have been denied, which is unfair and I am sorry. You are, naturally, wisely skeptical-- this picture probably doesn't help. But "skepticism" and "Diarrhea Planet" cannot meaningfully coexist. They are matter and antimatter, Superman and Kryptonite. Their new album, I'm Rich Beyond Your Wildest Dreams, is fun and ingratiating, and you can hear some of their joyfully fist-pumping spirit coursing through it. But by itself, it doesn't make the case for why you should take a band with this name to your bosom. Aggressive ridiculousness is a wonderful tool for inducing joy, but it's tricky and risky getting the dosage correct, and the main problem with a Diarrhea Planet full-length, amazingly, is that it's somehow not quite ridiculous enough.
There are some really good moments, here, to be sure. Diarrhea Planet are a pop punk band, essentially, one that has iron-enriched its sound with the good-times hedonism of hair metal and Tenacious D-style guitar heroics. Their songs sound as much like teen-movie ideas about rock-and-roll bands-- the Wyld Stallyns, the Lone Rangers-- as they do the work real-world rock bands.
Tellingly, many of the songs on I'm Rich Beyond Your Wildest Dreams could pass for KISS: "Lite Dream", in particular, sounds like an Ace Frehley vocal take. There are furtively odd moments in the songs that remind you they are being made in 2013, not 1977, like "Lite Dream"'s shivery little outbreak of Sonic Youth guitars in the bridge, or the almost-Strokes high notes in the intro to "Separations". But they are usually shoulder-checked into a locker, moments later, by a battalion of wind-milled power chords.
This is an album you yell along to, preferably into the face of someone else who is yelling back. Listening to it on headphones at a cubicle desk is like playing It's Dark and Hell Is Hot while doing your taxes: It may work, it may not, but it was certainly not designed for those listening conditions. The most satisfying songs on I'm Rich are the ones that adapt a bit to the fact that all six members, logistically speaking, cannot be present to scream every note in your face as you listen. The wistful tinge in "Kids", for instance, makes the song stand out.
Some of the lyrics hint at love and longing, sort of: "White Girls" sketches out a break-up happening amid a "drunken chorus of bros." But the back-to-back songs "Skeleton Head" and "Baby Head" are little more indicative. Some of it grows a little same-y. But seriously, and I simply cannot stress this enough: if Diarrhea Planet are playing in a 100-mile radius of where you are sitting, go there. (And for God's sake, make sure you stay for "Ghost With A Boner.") The next day, this album will be here to remind you, however faintly, of the experience.
