You'll Rebel To Anything (Expanded and Remastered 2008)

Album review

Had the Mael brothers from Sparks grown up on speed and death metal, slept on pins and needles nightly, and had Rob Zombie for their music teacher, they might have released an album as tense, strident, and freakishly fun as You'll Rebel to Anything. Mindless Self Indulgence's lead singer, Jimmy Urine, is a helium-voiced campy word-twister like Russell Mael, but he's never met a cuss word he didn't like, isn't afraid to destroy a Rush song, and is not as much smart as smartass. Cool couplets like "I like my coffee black/Just like my metal" have made him the darling of fun goths, but on You'll Rebel to Anything his band -- which has always been very good -- is now fantastic, matching Urine punch for punch, whip snap for whip snap, and twist for turn. This is a furiously twitchy record with a million things going on at once, all put through a glitchy, stuttering blender. Sure, there are those straight-fingered bar chords the industrial metal set love so much, but there's also a ton of bright, ping-ponging synth notes and a near Plunderphonics style of editing things down to short bursts that would make the quickest thrash band go "wow." Plus, you'd have to listen to 20 prog rock albums to get as many time changes and you can bet they wouldn't have any lyrics as youthfully exuberant as "I'm not educated/Extra caffeinated/I just masturbated." You'll Rebel is for the rebellious teenager and the rebelliously teenaged at heart, but rarely does such irreverence, irresponsibility, and ire come dressed in a sound so thrilling. The album is solid enough to raise MSI above the black nail polish set's best-kept secret, and if all this trashy flipping the bird sounds too Insane Clown Posse, too Marilyn Manson, know that the bassist from those barometers of taste Interpol is a big fan. He probably appreciates snarling loud party music with an extra helping of outlandish, so take the stick out of your you-know-what and join him.

© David Jeffries /TiVo