dwayne and jeff. cooties in heavy syrup and rubber and glue. review by alan haber. buhdge

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Rubber and Glue (2004) Cooties in Heavy Syrup (2001) Dwayne and Jeff Squaresville A girl draws a picture of herself in the arms of another man; a guy extols the virtues of eating a healthy breakfast; a boy ponders going steady with a beautiful dreamer whose head is made of glass; and a complicated, air-guitar-playing woman turns forty in the shadow of females half her age who aren't as strange but are twice as boring, and that's just in the first four songs on Rubber and Glue, the latest album from brothers Dwayne and Jeff Booth who collectively possess enough electrifying imagination and craft to power the Hoover Dam for the next four hundred years. There's a song in that description, I'll bet, and the brothers Booth are just the songsmiths to write it. You're probably sensing that these Booth guys are not your average, everyday, ordinary songwriters, and you're right; they see depth in the commonplace, in the obvious, and in the normal. They set about mining the deep-seated emotion lurking underneath the surface so you don't have to, and, as a bonus, they tell their stories, weighty and complex, within tightly-constructed, melody and harmony-rich songs for adults worth their weight in irony and gold. The songs, not the adults. John Lennon used to say that he could make a guitar speak, a mean feat even for a musician conversant in all things fret, octave and tempo, but I believe now, as I did then, that he could. The best musicians and songwriters can do magic like that with their intrinsic command of their instruments; they can make the notes they marry to their words sing. These 14 songs sing, alright; they sing volumes, and you'd be happy to have them sit on your shelf. The songs, I mean. The Booths ply their twisted trade within traditional pop frameworks, mining inspiration from Byrds, jangle, and all things hooky. Their vocals are eerily reminiscent of REM's Michael Stipe, if, that is, Stipe were leading a version of REM that played nothing but catchy pop songs. Their playing, which constitutes the lion's share of musicianly duties on their albums, and their harmonies and background vocals are simply stellar. Their slightly-off-center view of the world, intended, I'm thinking, for a decidedly mature audience, is the most pivotal ingredient in their overall mix that ratchets them a notch or two above any similarly-skewed contenders you'd care to mention. The scab-eating, rubber-chicken-choking "pigeons" in the same-named power pop tune are only the tip of Rubber and Glue's iceberg. Witness the complicated girl who is stuck on a famous female singer in the gorgeous, deliberately-paced ballad "Joni Mitchell," and the bitter guy who pines for a fragile girl, if only to be able to put the screws to her by twisting her spine in the pretty, acoustic "Anna Something." You might not want to hang around them at your cousin's birthday party, but you'd surely belly up to the bar with them to get inside their heads in the same way you might slow down on the highway to check out a car crash that's slowing down traffic. The same goes for the doofus losers who populate the hysterically-funny and twisted "Cordless Interruptus"; I'll let you discover their, uh, talents yourselves. The Booth's previous exercise in musical dementia, the colorfully-named "Cooties in Heavy Syrup," is no less clever by half. It is, in fact, as masterpiecely as Rubber and Glue. Opening with a jaunty sixties-flavored instrumental--kind of a New Christy Minstrels-meets-The Free Design-meets-Up With People confection, if those groups didn't sing--sets the stage for a dozen widescreen snapshots of misifts at work and play in the world--true square pegs trying to fit into round holes, one and all. Such as the influenza-infected guy who urges a girl to not look down or risk falling in love with his depression in the light-samba-esque, harmony-rich, for-adults-only "Don't Look Down," or the guy in the rocking "I Like Girls" who lusts after a girl who may just be a little off-center. You may or may not want to follow the advice given in the Merseybeat-meets-rockabilly "Dinosaurs that Fight"; then again, you may just be the kind of person who thinks that, as the Booths sing, dinosaurs that fight are pretty cool. The insecure fellow who gets jazzed by a girl who drinks a glass of dirty water in the beat-driven "Girl With an Opinion" may just be the prototypical Booth hero, a guy who's not afraid to jump into the fire of life and possibly get burned. After all, those who play it safe never have the satisfaction of rounding all of life's bases. Those who try anything once, like the flawed heroes and heroines of the Booth's creations, may trip and stumble, but they do not fear life (although I suspect they at least fear a bit of themselves). The Booths look like oh-so-normal musician types in the photos adorning the back cover of Rubber and Glue, and decidedly, well, stretched on the backside of Cooties, which says something about their dual nature. What it says, I don't know, but if I had to speculate, I'd say that if push comes to shove, the boys would rather stretch than be normal, if there is such as thing. As normal, I mean. Alan Haber March 25, 2005
alan haber's pure pop buhdgeblog hot buhdge \| pop buhdge \| buhdge remembers television buhdge \| film buhdge \| books buhdge video buhdge \| buhdge fine print \| links about buhdge \| write for buhdge \| contact home (c) 2004 Alan Haber

Rubber and Glue (2004)
Cooties in Heavy Syrup (2001)
Dwayne and Jeff
Squaresville

dwayne and jeff's rubber and glue A girl draws a picture of herself in the arms of another man; a guy extols the virtues of eating a healthy breakfast; a boy ponders going steady with a beautiful dreamer whose head is made of glass; and a complicated, air-guitar-playing woman turns forty in the shadow of females half her age who aren't as strange but are twice as boring, and that's just in the first four songs on Rubber and Glue, the latest album from brothers Dwayne and Jeff Booth who collectively possess enough electrifying imagination and craft to power the Hoover Dam for the next four hundred years. There's a song in that description, I'll bet, and the brothers Booth are just the songsmiths to write it.

You're probably sensing that these Booth guys are not your average, everyday, ordinary songwriters, and you're right; they see depth in the commonplace, in the obvious, and in the normal. They set about mining the deep-seated emotion lurking underneath the surface so you don't have to, and, as a bonus, they tell their stories, weighty and complex, within tightly-constructed, melody and harmony-rich songs for adults worth their weight in irony and gold. The songs, not the adults.

John Lennon used to say that he could make a guitar speak, a mean feat even for a musician conversant in all things fret, octave and tempo, but I believe now, as I did then, that he could. The best musicians and songwriters can do magic like that with their intrinsic command of their instruments; they can make the notes they marry to their words sing. These 14 songs sing, alright; they sing volumes, and you'd be happy to have them sit on your shelf. The songs, I mean.

The Booths ply their twisted trade within traditional pop frameworks, mining inspiration from Byrds, jangle, and all things hooky. Their vocals are eerily reminiscent of REM's Michael Stipe, if, that is, Stipe were leading a version of REM that played nothing but catchy pop songs. Their playing, which constitutes the lion's share of musicianly duties on their albums, and their harmonies and background vocals are simply stellar. Their slightly-off-center view of the world, intended, I'm thinking, for a decidedly mature audience, is the most pivotal ingredient in their overall mix that ratchets them a notch or two above any similarly-skewed contenders you'd care to mention.

The scab-eating, rubber-chicken-choking "pigeons" in the same-named power pop tune are only the tip of Rubber and Glue's iceberg. Witness the complicated girl who is stuck on a famous female singer in the gorgeous, deliberately-paced ballad "Joni Mitchell," and the bitter guy who pines for a fragile girl, if only to be able to put the screws to her by twisting her spine in the pretty, acoustic "Anna Something." You might not want to hang around them at your cousin's birthday party, but you'd surely belly up to the bar with them to get inside their heads in the same way you might slow down on the highway to check out a car crash that's slowing down traffic. The same goes for the doofus losers who populate the hysterically-funny and twisted "Cordless Interruptus"; I'll let you discover their, uh, talents yourselves.

dwayne and jeff's cooties in heavy syrup The Booth's previous exercise in musical dementia, the colorfully-named "Cooties in Heavy Syrup," is no less clever by half. It is, in fact, as masterpiecely as Rubber and Glue. Opening with a jaunty sixties-flavored instrumental--kind of a New Christy Minstrels-meets-The Free Design-meets-Up With People confection, if those groups didn't sing--sets the stage for a dozen widescreen snapshots of misifts at work and play in the world--true square pegs trying to fit into round holes, one and all.

Such as the influenza-infected guy who urges a girl to not look down or risk falling in love with his depression in the light-samba-esque, harmony-rich, for-adults-only "Don't Look Down," or the guy in the rocking "I Like Girls" who lusts after a girl who may just be a little off-center. You may or may not want to follow the advice given in the Merseybeat-meets-rockabilly "Dinosaurs that Fight"; then again, you may just be the kind of person who thinks that, as the Booths sing, dinosaurs that fight are pretty cool.

The insecure fellow who gets jazzed by a girl who drinks a glass of dirty water in the beat-driven "Girl With an Opinion" may just be the prototypical Booth hero, a guy who's not afraid to jump into the fire of life and possibly get burned. After all, those who play it safe never have the satisfaction of rounding all of life's bases. Those who try anything once, like the flawed heroes and heroines of the Booth's creations, may trip and stumble, but they do not fear life (although I suspect they at least fear a bit of themselves).

The Booths look like oh-so-normal musician types in the photos adorning the back cover of Rubber and Glue, and decidedly, well, stretched on the backside of Cooties, which says something about their dual nature. What it says, I don't know, but if I had to speculate, I'd say that if push comes to shove, the boys would rather stretch than be normal, if there is such as thing.

As normal, I mean.

Alan Haber
March 25, 2005