STRIPPER MUSIC

Album Review

Stripper Music, by Chicagoans Big Breakfast, is a fairly unremarkable alt blend of roots rock, traditional instrumentation echoes, and barroom poetry lyrics. The album primarily swings between amiable, Stonesy romps ("Sangria," "Hide") and folky, ruminative narratives ("Bucket of Tears," "China"). The band also makes occasional forays into the avant-garde (which seems to be a hip Chicago tendency throughout the '90s and beyond); this results in an effectively spaced-out, throbbing atmosphere (with skronky experimental touches) to kick off "(Winners and Losers) Baby Blue." But it also results in ineffective cacophony on "Everybody Should Shut Up," which comes off like a poetry-slam parody and ultimately undermines the lyrical aspirations that drive much of singer Peter Joly's compositions. (Joly's vocal abilities also draw a bit of a blank.) The songwriter clearly has a lot to say with his anecdotal wordplay and Bukowski-meets-Raymond Carver literary aspirations, but the tunes don't seem to be the right context for such ambition, and often suffer under the unwieldy weight of all Joly has to say. It often seems like poetry pulled from a journal and set to music — whether it can be sung or not and whether it fits rhythmically or not. And where this word spill might work for Lou Reed (on New York for example) or Bright Eyes' Conor Oberst, it doesn't quite add up here.