Artist: Sex With Rollercoasters

Artist: Sex With Rollercoasters

Links: http://facebook.com/sexwithrollercoasters

http://sexwithrollercoasters.com

http://youtube.com/sexwrollercoasters

With song titles averaging nine words and referencing airplane pilots, songs with male falsetto and audio clips of spoken word (2:40 of “To Darcy Merry Xmas 09 From Your Favorite Attorney”), Sex With Rollercoasters' Greatest Hits Volume II initially brought to mind Grandaddy's The Sophtware Slump. But the better preview of Sex With Rollercoasters came from its music video for “All My Friends Are Dead.” It's a funky partier who pukes rainbow-colored psychedelia that instead of ending the party, starts it anew.

I didn't get that at first. The pair of standout tracks, “Dumpster Baby” and “Oops,” are tame by comparison, and collectively constitute a template for future success. While they do not demonstrate the vocal range of “Something About An Aeroplane Pilot (:30-:38), or utilize the optimal lower vocal of “The Helicopter That Was Afraid To Fly” (1:10), “Dumpster Baby” smartly uses falsetto selectively (:57), much like Clap Your Hands Say Yeah.

More than that, “Dumpster Baby” works through expressive guitar riffs and complementary drums, placing the band squarely in the indie rock lineage of Wild Nothing (“Summer Holiday”), Real Estate (“It's Real”), Beach Fossils (“Daydream”), and DIIV (“Doused”). Also paced by guitar is the more upbeat “Oops,” a story song that despite the familiar tale of adolescence having real consequences, displays a deft touch and considerable charm. Colorful keyboarding is just as effective here in backing (:07) as it is elsewhere when more prominent-in-the-mix (intro of “The Girl With The Pelican Keychain”) – this non-guitar instrumentation bringing to mind the Mates of State (“Fraud In The 80’s”) and They Might Be Giants (“Birdhouse In Your Soul”) of the musical world.

Add to that lyrical refrains like “Sunshine's never gonna find me” (1:08 of “Teens at Higher Risk”) and references such as “factory defaults” – which I took to be an apt description for the detrimental nature/nurture of a particular character's parents (2:28 of “It's Not A Cage If It Has Ribbons”) – and it becomes clear that Sex With Rollercoasters is pretty spectacular in pop mode.

But it is the funkiest section of Greatest Hits Volume II that I kept going back to – “The Girl With The Pelican Keychain” at 1:43. Putting aside its allusion to “You Keep Me Hangin' On,” which is more Kim Wilde than the Supremes and is not the only melodic reference on the album [e.g. Eartha Kitt's “Santa Baby” (“Something About An Aeroplane Pilot”) and LCD Soundsystem's “North American Scum” (“Teens at Higher Risk”)] – there's something wonderful about that lyric (“Dance to the beat of another / It keeps me hanging on”) sung over Partridge Family ba-ba-bas funneled through a progression that is more Foo Fighters' “I'll Stick Around” than “I Think I Love You.”

To try to put this memorably musical moment into words, indulge me for a second. Walking west on Chicago Avenue in Chicago away from Lake Michigan, past the Museum of Contemporary Art (where he was apparently making exotic balloons or something), I ran into Wayne Coyne – reedy thin, rock layers, large ‘fro, frontman swagger to spare. Did I talk to him? No. (How does one talk to Wayne Coyne? Even Kesha needs acid to do that.) But I felt all the funkier for the encounter. And that's what listening to the aptly-named Sex With Rollercoasters is like. Walking past Wayne Coyne.

Then puking psychedelic rainbows.

*** The author of this review, Eugene Long, plays the khol for the following band: http://youtu.be/tMS73-1kCr8