I've had this Norwegian editor for nearly five years now, and I'm still not sure I can either type or even pronounce his name. And so I do neither. There are three a's in it, of that I'm certain, but where they go or how they get pronounced, you got me.
Enter Kaada. He's from Norway, too. Maybe he pronounces it "Kay-Dah," or maybe it sounds like "Kah-Day." To-may-to or to-mah-to, he's the newest cat on Mike Patton's Ipecac label, and this stateside debut of his is almost beyond words. What the fuck is this Frankensteinian aggregate stitched together from the American pop graveyard? Good thing I have an editor whose name is pronounceable to help me in times such as these:
TweetyBird76: tell me what you think. it's a headscratcher.HallOatesIII: okHallOatesIII: it's weirdTweetyBird76: i thought it was me, since i don't really dig cut'n paste.HallOatesIII: what's this guy tryin to prove?HallOatesIII: all these disparate styles squished together, makes no senseTweetyBird76: yeah, odd for oddity's sake.TweetyBird76: so goes Ipecac...i placing in teh 6 range.HallOatesIII: hahHallOatesIII: sounds about right to me
Be they the disembodied voices of discarded Lou Rawls prototypes, the lost Juanita Rogers, or Brenda Lee's li'l sister, Kaada fidgets and squirms a lot while putting all these samples in a row, grafting them onto some doo-woppy pop art with a palpable Pixie Stix 'n' Pepsi sugar high. That energy can be endearing: When's the last time Conway Twitty sounded as fresh as he does on "Care"? (Conway Twitty was my very first concert, so I think I can safely say "never.")
"Mainframe" reiterates ad infinitum the peculiarly sweet metaphor, "She is my mainframe," and is constructed out of a snippet of soft-dicked 70s funksters Climax, some harmonica, and a tribal pounding of tom and cowbell. It's catchy as fuck, even though there remains a weird plasticness to it all, like showroom dummies come to life to mack on you under the florescent lights of the neighborhood's new Polly Ester's. As queerly enticing is the klezmer clarinet, chord organ, and choppy guitars of "All Wrong", which drops a fetching Bee Brothers snippet in with samples of Kaada's previous group, Chloroform All-Scars. "Black California" resurrects the onomatopoeias of "Tutti Frutti" and "Surfin' Bird", but it's not nearly as much mindless fun as it thinks it is. And if you can imagine a miniature Prince claymation figure (well, an inch or two shorter) crawling around your body and screeching out those despicable gospel hollers off his recent albums, you have some idea of the terror within "Burden".
HallOatesIII: you know, i'm not sure i'm feelin' itTweetyBird76: u notice the cd smells weird?TweetyBird76: loses a full point on odor aloneHallOatesIII: does it? let me seeHallOatesIII: you're right!TweetyBird76: LOL?HallOatesIII: so it's weak AND it smells bad!TweetyBird76: reminds me-- i think i need to shower, BRB
Two things ultimately permeate Thank You for Giving Me Your Valuable Time: the odor of the cover art (it's far too easy to just say the liner notes stink-- they're actually a bit fishy smelling, like something caught in the East River, soused in chemical spillage), and the salesmen pitch of the title track. For four minutes at the album's end, this pasty advertising suit grinds the title into your head: two-dimensional, stiff, trying to sell you home insurance and a refinanced mortgage even though you rent a loft space, and his heavy cologne just reeks. So what can I tell you? The disc is hit-or-miss to be sure, and all told, we find Kaada somewhat insincere despite his best-crooned efforts at the hard sale of wackiness, and a bit too eager to please. Of course, some folks might be willing to look past that if these kinds of pastiches are up their alley, but this type of release not being particularly rare, I'd suggest you get your fix somewhere else.
