Slumber Party
The self-titled debut from Omaha, Neb., indie-rock band Baby Walrus is an irritating mix of 17 songs largely filled with clicking shakers, jingles, noisemakers or whatever other uninteresting instruments the overrated trio gathered from the supermarket infant aisle.
Luckily, the most annoying songs on “Baby Walrus,” like “Some Dawns No Bird Will Sing” and “Grape Jelly’s Origins,” clock in at under two minutes.
Feel like listening to random chatter, room noise and blurting trumpets performed over object tapping and shouting? “Flipless in What Plastic Box,” the CD’s longest song, has four minutes of recorded pointlessness waiting just for you.
If “Cold Cold Stone Pt. 1” doesn’t satisfy with enough low-pitched vocal groveling into its minute-long glory, the 12-second acoustic-guitar-wailing ballad “Cold Cold Stone Pt. 2” should help fill any room with enough stupid noise to permit one to save the rest of “Baby Walrus” for a day that hasn’t already filled its aggravating-sound quota.
But unlike the bells, beeps, clanks and screeching that’s unavoidable in daily life, at least you can turn “Baby Walrus” off “¦ permanently.
“?Joe Wertz
This article appears in Mar 12-18, 2008.