The Terror Pigeon Dance Revolt! are a dance/electronica collective known around the Manhattan/Brooklyn scene for their elaborate live performances, where members wear outrageous costumes made of stuffed animals and have on-stage pillow fights. But the stage shenanigans are merely a distraction from frontman Neil Fridd’s singing voice, which sounds the way my regular voice did during puberty.
On “Fast Forward Regrets,” a track off TPDR’s latest release via David Byrne’s Luaka Bop label, his pubescent larynx cracks as he tells of the time he “barfed on the dance floor.” Without knowing it, Fridd is here describing TPDR’s sound: dance music that makes people want to barf.
I mean it: the multiple synthesizers on “My Favorite Hair” spin so wildly out of control over the song’s spastic drums that you might feel motion sick, and Fridd’s pathetic pick-up line telling a girl he can offer “so much more than ass” isn’t exactly a vocal Sea-Band. Also nauseating: the obnoxious group vocals of “Grouphug” (“I’m sorry I was like a jerk that way!”), and the gratingly cheesy repeated piano line during “Snowday.” Someone press STOP, I want to get off.
