Space Tourists Corporate Dogs (Self released)
By Martin Cizmar
Every Tuesday, we here at Up On The Sun do a little feature called You asked For It where we review local CDs. Here’s the thing with You Asked for It: If you ask for it, we give it to you. Pretty much every CD we get goes in the queue for review, thereby committing me to listening to it at least once all the way through.
This, of course, puts us at the mercy of you, Dear Reader. In providing this community service, we’re left hoping that no one will send us a CD just to fuck with us. Would it be worth two hours of my time to record a couple of my friends screwing around in a garage, stream-of-conscious, then send the burned record to the local paper? No. Am I totally convinced Space Tourists feel the same way? Also no.
Space Tourists play – how to describe it – aggressively non-melodic lo-fi jam rock. Their record, Corporate Dogs is full of extended and repetitive guitar solos constantly the same but always played a little differently, briefly taking on flavors ranging from jazz to trash, seemingly haphazardly. The techniques they use could be interesting in the hands of extraordinarily gifted musicians, but here it’s awful, each half-baked rhythm bleeding all over the next.
Singer/bassist Harry Crump can’t sing anything in key, and not in that beguiling way of Clap Your Hands Say Yeah’s Alec Ounsworth. Then there are the lyrics, which are nothing less than insulting:
“Funky old bridge on Mill Avenue/suspension or cantilever/trimmed in white Christmas lights, one of the few places to cross the river/cars wiz by the old landmark at night… Flanked by the steakhouse and theatre, some guy just crossed it in a Porsche two-seater/ Small concrete walls cupolas with white benches/relentless neon renovation so far has missed it/bridge on Mill Avenue, bebop bop shooby do.”
And if you think that’s bad, you’ve gotta hear the one about bottled water. Oof.
With all that said, I almost hesitate to do this, but here goes…
If you’re a musician from the Phoenix metro area and would like to submit a CD for review, please send it in an envelope marked “YAFI” to:
Martin Cizmar You Asked For It c/o Phoenix New Times 1201 E. Jefferson Street Phoenix , AZ 85032
