REVIEW FOR JANUARY 8, 2004

YAPPY'S DOG TREATS
IT'S MY BIRTHDAY!!!
A NEW LOW RECORDS, 2003
 
This is what we in the business commonly term a "joke band."  Basically, Yappy's Dog Treats is just two guys and a Casio (like you expected different with the Weird Al-influenced name.)  It makes this serious-minded review pretty damn pointless.  Still, I don't mind It's My Birthday!!!  In fact, I really like it.  See, the band (such as it is, with the name change every fifteen minutes or so and the allusions to this thing being recorded through a computer microphone) has a fair bit of talent on the keyboards and some of the jokey elements are actually kind of funny.  There's more than a fair bit of the poop/pee humour about and Yappy's Dog Treats tends toward the sophomoric.  In my opinion, that's great.  This isn't going to appeal to everybody, and why should it?  Yappy's Dog Treats is exactly what it seems like: a thrown-together band dealing in shit jokes and debauchery.  Hey, I'm just being honest here.
 
All bullshit aside, there are a few clever things that this album offers.  The covers of Ministry's "So What" and Nirvana's "Smells Like Teen Spirit" are actually preferable to the real thing, being respectively recorded as lounge and circus songs (the highly illegal (cough) splice of an Adam Sandler routine from They're All Gonna Laugh At You! makes Nirvana more listenable, I find.)  The three versions of "It's My Birthday" have some decent subversive lyrics and feature these squeaky high-pitched vocals that are rather cute.  (Yes, I know what I said.  If that upsets you, drill a hole into your eye.)  Also, I find "Little Pee-Pee Dance" kinda catchy, even though the first version of it sounds vaguely Hindu.  Damn sandnigger-lovers.
 
To summarize, It's My Birthday!!! is a decent album and it's being sold at the price of US$6 through mail-order like all A New Low merchandise.  It's not essential merchandise but neither is that $30 vinyl of some fifth-rate German techno band you bought.  Get this or I'll throw rocks at you, poopybrain.
 
A NEW LOW RECORDS
9175 Whitecap Rains Court
Las Vegas, NV 89148
USA
http://www.anewlowrecords.com/
[email protected]