Richard Bitch The Really Really Jeff Hair People

While first listening to Richard Bitch's debut album, the unforgivably titled The Really Really Jeff Hair People, my roommate came into my room cringing.

"Does that even count as music?" he asked.

He had a point. There is something essential at the center of this recording that is broken, and each song drones this wretched tone of disrepair for the entire world to hear. The PR that came with the album listed Radiohead, Kevin Shields and the Beatles as primary influences. But that claim is akin to taking out a personals ad comparing yourself to Katie Holmes when in reality in looks like you just got your face untangled from a wheat thresher. I can only assume that the PR people were drunk when they heard it. Horribly, horribly drunk. Because there's hardly a note on this album that bears any resemblance to any of those influences, and I know that after suffering through the first five songs, I was desperately in need of about a thousand Manhattans to make the pain go away.

It didn't. The Really Jeff Overture is tedious, muddy and completely lacking in melody. And it's, by far, one of the best songs included here. One thing is true: when the album finally ends, you will be changed inside. There will be something ugly within you, rotting in your gut, spreading like oil into a glass of water, slowly twisting it's way up to the soft tissue of your throat before...

But then, you'll have to forgive me. I didn't mean to start this review by merely spraying the page with half-witted invective; but that's the sort of mood this album puts you in. It tries so desperately hard to please, to sound like fun - and not just any fun, but the craziest kind of wild and super awesome fun you've ever had - such that it's complete failure to do so sounds outright insulting. This is an album that simultaneously begs and dares you to enjoy it. An album that allows you to hear what a band could sound like if they stopped wasting time writing intelligent songs and just got straight to the party. But why bother?

There are plenty of bands that do this. In fact, I bet one is playing nearby your house right now. Only ten in the morning? So what? You know that homeless guy up the street with his busted-ass, out-of-tune Oscar Schmidt acoustic who can never quite seem to remember the opening to chords to Free Bird and sings like there's a meth-crazed weasel scratching to get out of his throat? Yeah, he's better too.