We Are the Lazer Viking

Album review

Philadelphia's An Albatross returns with We Are the Lazer Viking, an eight-minute contact high of fetid noise rock blither. "Electric Suits and Cowboy Boots" corrals one of those minutes. Inside, keyboards buzz chaotically as a manic guitar happily chomps at Eddie Geida's spazzy flashes of vocal -- it sounds like playing high-stakes Pac-Man while hanging upside down. Elsewhere (or a minute-and-twelve-seconds later, as it were), "Get Faster, Cry for Happy" and the aptly-named "Revolutionary Politics of Dance" accelerate the dancefloor action to ludicrous speed before setting the strobe lights to 'stun'. An Albatross and producer Wharton Tiers swirl around those beats and neon lights until you're not just high but outright sick as a frothing dog, and the whole sticky mess spits back up like 11 pairs of pre-chewed, fun-size wax lips. This is An Albatross' niche, as tiny, loud, and odd as it is. Jarring brevity, assaulting instrumentation, salacious sarcasm, and social comment vagary are part of the act for most spazz-rock dealers, including Geida and his people. What defines We Are the Lazer Vikings is its weirdly danceable -- straight up enjoyable -- bits and pieces. And that's saying quite a bit, especially when the album croaks out in compacted 48-, 45-, and 39-second cluster bombs of sound.

© Johnny Loftus /TiVo