Search - Biafra, Nixon & Toadliquors :: Prairie Home Invasion

Can't get enough

Whitney Hampson | Indiana, PA | 06/02/2006

(5 out of 5 stars)

"This album is brilliant. I had no prior exposure to Mojo Nixon and limited Jello Biafra time, and this album has me hooked on both. One of the beatiful things about this album is that, unlike in Biafra's punk work, you can actually understand a lot of the lyrics (well, I can actually understand them, which means most people probably could). It fills my need for twangy, made for singing music and anti-authroitarian lyrics.



Aside from being an amazing truck crash of style, the ideas the album expresses are consistently thought-provoking every time I listen to it. The general theme is the experiences and ideas of the working class, but Mojo and Jello are not to be pined down. The album is a remarkable balance of songs critiquing hegemonic middle class American society (ie, Love me I'm a liberal), mocking fundtamentalist thinking (Atomic Power), pointing out problematic working class cultural experiences (Mascot Mania), and honoring the experiences and ideas of working class people (Hamlet Chicken Plant Diasaster, Plastic Jesus).



Since we're playing the favorites game in these reviews, and because the music is wonderful both individually and as a wholeconcept, I'll wax musical on a few tracks (though nothing beats numbers 23 and 42):



1) Will the Fetus Be Aborted? (on my burned copy, this is the first track, and so it will always be in my mind) is such a catchy tune that it makes you want to sing with glee. My favorite verse is about the revolutionary woman having fifteen commie babies - Phyllis Schafley, ain't that great? (If you don't know if you're ready to hear this album, listen to this one first. It's an easy, biting, funny satire.)



4 (on my cd)) Atomic Power - The deadpan arrogance with which this song is mockingly sung makes me think of Stephen Colbert. I sometimes sing the refrain when I'm walking around empty streets at night - it's resounding.



8) Nostalgia for an Age that Never Existed - I think this is the best song on the album. It is such a spot-on critique of the total disregard and abuse of history in our society that it gives me goosebumps. The genre is perfectly Jonathan Swift-y - a fifties do-wop song. And it makes it clear that nobody is safe from Jello Biafra. From the use of the 50s as a heteronormative patriarchal utopia for the conservative right to the hypocrisy of the moderate left who played at the 60s and then forgot everything they learned, Biafra cuts through the fat and hits the bone of our historical myopia. He is at his most disgutedly dersisive, though, when talking about his own ilk, former punks who exaggerate their rebelious experiences and have become clsoed to the basic tenets of punk. This song is high social critique. It is a piece of art.



9) Hamlet Chicken Plant Diasaster - Eloquent and full of suppressed rage, this song shows the dragon created by the abuse of the laboring classes that is just waiting to be unleashed. It is also a fitting tribute to the victims of exploitative labor practices.



"

Genius

Anti-Human Supremicist | Seattle, WA | 01/02/2005

(4 out of 5 stars)

"Jello making a country record to show all those non conformist punk rockers a thing or two, is the most punk thing I've ever seen. And the music is good too."