"Mark Prindle! Ma-ark Prindle! Please give this CD a good review!
Mark Prindle! Ma-ark Prindle! Oh won't you give this thing its due?
Won't you save my life? Won't you be my wife? There's only one more thing I ask of you!
Mark Prindle! Ma-ark Prindle! Please give this CD a good review?"
Electric Doormat is a one-man-band featuring Mr. Ben Spees, a fellow who understands that the quickest way to a man's heart is through his ego. Ben not only mailed me a cool $4 in exchange for this review and a Mark Prindle CD (thus is the nature of the "Bribery Review"), but went one step further - creating an actual SONG for me! Why don't more of you people do that? I'm talking to YOU, Robert Plant! Maybe I wouldn't have reamed Manic Nirvana quite so hard you entitled it Markic NirPrindla. Think twice, think nice, but don't think about my wife's tights!
To me, Electric Doormat sounds like early They Might Be Giants with "Weird Al" Yankovic singing. In other words, it's keyboard-heavy nerd pop. You don't believe me? Check out www.mp3.com/electricdoormat. Here's something that must be stressed once again: My 1 through 10 ratings are based entirely on MY OWN PERSONAL MUSICAL TASTES. I personally don't like this particular genre of music. But there are a LOT of people who do, and those folks (fans of Oingo Boingo, later Devo, TMBG and all other bouncy post-new-wave-type quirk pop) should check this guy out for sure. Because he's really good at this kind of music. The production is fantastic - by far the most professional-sounding of any "bribery review" CD I have yet received. Most of the music is smartly arranged and skillfully performed. And the most impressive part is that, regardless of the singer's light semi-geeky voice, his vocal harmonies are unbelievable. Just BEYOND impressive in both scope and delivery.
So what's not to like? Honestly even I must admit that several of these songs are amazing whether you like this style or not ("The Rectangle, The Triangle And The Line," "Alive," "Reflect," "Something To Say," "Another Year" and "Stupe Soleau" really do it for Ol' Prind). But if you DON'T like this kind of fruity la-dee-da little kids' music, you're stuck with a full 18 tracks of piano-teacher-style over-happy melodicizing and ickily "clever" lyrics like "Contradictionary," "Freudian Ship" and the repulsive "Girl So Sweet" (which appears to be a bouncy novelty tune about eating a human being). But to be honest, I don't get much out of "Ana Ng" either, and that song is popular as all 23-skidoo, so what do I know? And more importantly, why was I sent this CD? Surely Ben must have caught on to the fact that my web site is for manly people who like Guns `N' Roses!
Ben Spees is out to get me!
He won't catch me!
I'm fuckin' INNOCENT!