Any time I review something by an independent band, I always try
\nto turn my sarcasm knob down as low as it will go and attempt to
\nfind at least one redeeming factor in what I listen to. This isn’t
\nto say that I expect these albums to be bad, it’s just that I try
\nto be less critical of the fruits of their labors than I would be
\nof a signed band.<\/p>\n
However, in the case of Chicago’s Dead Nuggets Dish, the only
\npositive thing I can say about their 1997 album
\nLotushead<\/i> is this: It’s short. Even so, this attempt to
\nmerge the funkiness of the Red Hot Chili Peppers with a slightly
\nprogressive\/alternative rock beat fails, making this disc a
\nchallenge to get through.<\/p>\n
The hardest thing to cut through on this album was the
\nhiccup-funk vocals by Kite Mosam, a combination that works about as
\nwell as Seagram’s and Dr. Pepper. (Trust me, I tried it once; it
\nwas like drinking motor oil.) Mosam should hopefully realize by now
\nthat his Anthony Kiedis-meets-Elvis schtick just doesn’t work, and
\nwhen the music does hold out signs of promise, the vocals really
\nbring the ship down. For God’s sake, sing straight, not in a
\nfreaking funk hiccup! Even when Kiedis does it too much, it bugs
\nme.<\/p>\n
Even there, the music’s not perfect. At times, guitarist Rob
\nCaya, bassist Troy Gourley and drummer Dave Baboorian seem to have
\nan interesting hook crafted (“Drive-Bys Of The Day,” “Degas (Little
\nBallerinas)”), but they then go into the reaches of psychedelic
\nweirdness that even Roky Erickson would have said was too much.
\n“Proportionally Distorted (Preaches)” is the musical equivalent to
\na bad drug trip; once you’ve experienced it, you never want to go
\nthrough that nightmare again.<\/p>\n
Another problem with
\nLotushead<\/i> is that the lyrics try to err on the side of Jim
\nMorrison – that is, be artistic without making one lick of sense.
\nCheck out the title track for a sample: “Damn Ulysses, your [sic]
\nlost again \/ Don’t think your [sic] gonna hang out here \/ Mooching
\noff my friends.” Likewise, “Lottery Town” reads like a bad poem.
\nHowever, other tracks like “Who Hired The Clown?” (a tale about
\nexecuted mass-murderer John Wayne Gacy) make sense once you read
\nthe lyric sheet. Too bad that Mosam’s vocals make most of the album
\na feat like translating the Rosetta Stone.<\/p>\n
Dead Nuggets Dish shows some faint sparks of breaking out of the
\nlocals circuit, but as
\nLotushead<\/i> is evidence of, they need to do a lot of work on
\ntheir songwriting and diction – and they may do well to lay off the
\ncosmic influences as well. After all, not all of us have read
\nShirley Jackson’s “The Lottery”.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":24964,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","template":"","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"tags":[],"artist":[6077],"rating":[5616],"class_list":["post-36169","review","type-review","status-publish","has-post-thumbnail","artist-dead-nuggets-dish","rating-rating-d"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/review\/36169","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/review"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/review"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=36169"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/review\/36169\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/24964"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=36169"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=36169"},{"taxonomy":"artist","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/artist?post=36169"},{"taxonomy":"rating","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/rating?post=36169"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}