Rating:
Genre:
Rock
Release Date: 07/12/2005
Since releasing the appealingly scruffy debut album
Hello Doctor,
Gravy Train!!!! have become a tighter, more pulled-together outfit (musically speaking, anyway; the group's lyrics are still a hodgepodge of pop culture, sex jokes, and their own lingo). However, this isn't necessarily a good thing: the rough edges that added to
Hello Doctor's D.I.Y. charm are missing, and missed, on the band's second album,
Are You Wigglin? The band has traded the cheap and cheerful, ghetto-fabulous
punk-
rap of its early work for a
new wave-inspired sound that occupies a space somewhere between the cheerleading chants of
Toni Basil's
"Mickey" (which
Gravy Train!!!! quote on the album's very first song,
"Jonny Makeup"), the gross-out camp of
Total Coelo, and
the B-52's' wilder moments. Flirtations with
glam rock (
"Gotta Get Outta Batwiddicals") and '50s
rock (
"Hump Lites") show that the group has possibly even more musical terrain to explore. However, singer
Chunx's vocals are also shriller and more prominent than they were on
Hello Doctor, and are more than a little hard to take on songs like
"(Everybody Do) The Thingy." Meanwhile, singer/dancer
Hunx's role is downplayed, which is too bad, since his cameos on
Hello Doctor were some of the album's highlights. Most of the time,
Gravy Train!!!! come across as kooky, loud, and proud of it; they carry this attitude off on story-songs such as
"Darque Tan," about a guy who fries in a tanning booth, and
"Ghost Boobs," the tale of a formerly well-endowed girl haunted by the loss of her assets after a crash diet. Too often, though, they cross the line from kooky to annoying, especially on
"Nudies from the Road" and the skit
"Bloopies." Though
Are You Wigglin? isn't as brash or immediate as
Hello Doctor, it moves fast and has its fun moments, but just how many there are of those depends on your tolerance for high-pitched vocals and silly sexual innuendo.
~Heather Phares, All Music Guide
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