Music Review: Foxy Shazam, “S/T” (Sire)

Posted by staticblog

on April 22, 2010M at 10:21 am

Rating: Hell, I don’t know.

Foxy Shazam’s second album, a self-titled monument to rock ‘n’ roll played at Roman Empire levels of excess, achieves that rarest of feats: music that is simultaneously extraordinary and borderline intolerable. This is sledgehammers over subtlety, and Jim Steinman over Brian Eno. The Cincinnati sextet lives in a paradise permanently illuminated by the dashboard light, pounding out bohemian rhapsodies with an insatiable appetite for destruction.

Eric Sean Nally’s pipes project the unmistakable flair for operatic overreach that made Freddie Mercury both wonderful and lovably ridiculous, and guitarist Loren Daniel Turner alternately channels Brian May and Slash — “Count Me Out” begins with towering tones that evoke “Sweet Child o’ Mine.” Speaking of Queen, “Unstoppable” is such a ready-made, stomp-the-bleachers sports anthem that it was played during this past Super Bowl telecast. Yes, if “Foxy Shazam” is not the most derivative album of 2010, one might reasonably cower in fear of the one that beats it.

But for all the obvious Meat Loafing taking place — “Second Floor” is a second cousin to “You Took the Words Right Out of My Mouth (Hot Summer Night)” — credit must go to Nally for apparent fearlessness when stupidity stares him down. After all, the asthmatic beat-boxing, echo-laden piano and gospel choir accompanying “Connect” all sound like a nightmare in which Trevor Horn and Teddy Riley co-produce a New Jack Swing-flavored Mercury solo album in 1988. It’s just as terrible and embarrassingly enticing as it sounds, much like the rest of this hilarious, nervy, hot mess of an album.

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