They Came From The Stars I Saw Them
An elongated, esoteric and ultimately crap band name will do nothing for a groups career, 'street cred', or indeed general longevity. Think of a really bad band name as being akin to the kind of tattoo which might seem funky at fifteen but looks feeble by fifty. They Came From The Stars I Saw Them - is a crap name, perhaps the most annoying to have emerged in recent years actually. So it's quite fitting really that the music the group peddle is also uniquely irritating.
The bands (no point wasting time typing out their full name all the time) sound is best described as faux wacky, vocally inadequate, lyrically redundant mad funk. Actually the whole CD seems like some sort of perverse joke and can be best compared to the comedy songs constructed by Adam Buxton and Joe Cornish for their Saturday morning show on Six Music. 'Lionel's Tears' in particular is as unfathomably bizarre a tune as you'll ever hear - it makes no sense, isn't easy to listen to and says nothing about the bands capabilities.
You could argue it's experimental but that'd be a disservice to the genuinely talented experimental groups out there. The band here are making weird music for weirds sake and it's neither cool nor clever. The Decemberists, Earlies, Notwist, Dresden Dolls, Clap Your Hands Say Yeah etc etc ad naseum all manage to carve a niche in an already saturated market with genuinely inspiring 'different' sounds and not once have any of the aforementioned sunk as low as this.
The 6th track (I won't name it because it's too long to type . . . again) does however have some cracking aspects to it. By cracking I mean palatable. It starts off like a classic 'death disco' number from the late 70's then less than a minute into what could be a tasty piece of music they ruin it all with some awfully crashing 'noise'. Why sabotage your own work? It's like deliberately pissing your pants before you head off to work in the morning.
It's not all bad though, the occasional almost Men at Work style instrumentals are a nice touch, but even they can't disguise the fact that this is mostly a collection of hastily arranged electronic beeps, annoying vocals and beatless boring four minute monstrosities.