Sea Urchin Destroy! cassette
A ten-song novelty rock opera written during and about the end of a relationship. I’ll pause this review for a moment while the reader recovers from the involuntary massive eye-roll that I, myself, also experienced when I put together exactly what this album was. Now that you’re back with me, I gotta say, my initial perception softened greatly once I was a few songs deep into this album. SEA URCHIN does a surprisingly good job meandering from subgenre to subgenre incredibly fluidly, often within the course of a single song. From ’50s rock’n’roll to pop punk to stoned-out heavy ’70s hard rock, they hit all points in between. Is it brilliant? Probably not. But is it as goofy as it initially seemed? Absolutely not. Songwriting and musicianship are pretty spot-on, and some of these songs are actually killer. Specifically, the song “Rock!” is wildly heavy and doesn’t sound like it was recorded in the last 50 years. How I found myself getting a little emotional during a song entitled “I Beefed It (On My Motorbike)” is absolutely beyond me—perhaps in part due to the fact that as a youth, the first cassette tape I ever bought with my own money was MEAT LOAF’s Bat Out of Hell II, and this song legit sounds like Jim Steinman could have written it. I don’t think I would go see the musical, were it all to be realized, but then again, getting to see some of these songs performed live might be worth it.