Flipper | Love

Flipper (2009)
By RICHARD BECK  |  May 26, 2009
1.5 1.5 Stars

090522_flipper_amin2

Flipper formed in San Francisco in 1979, and they're remembered three decades later because of a song called "Sex Bomb" that's one of the funniest pieces of music I've ever heard. It is eight minutes long. It has one crappy bass riff. Will Shatter sings one lyric: "Sex bomb, mama! Yeah!" That's the kind of thing that can earn you a place in history.

Thirty years on, most of the original line-up are back on a new album of studio tracks, but the spark is gone. Love is a humorless slog, a punk-by-the-numbers collection of 1-2-3-4 rock riffs and "rebellious" lyrics.

On "Live Real," Bruce Loose sings, "Don't be fake," and then he tells us that television is bad. The band's genius used to be their badness, their knack for embracing truly horrible noises, but on Love everything hangs together just fine. It's even polite, in a weird way, in its deference to the old traditions of punk rock. Flipper have earned the right to keep on if they want to, but wouldn't a reunion tour have been enough?

Related: Ride the Snake, Photos: Aerosmith, Dropkick Murphys at Comcast Center, Complaint Department, More more >
  Topics: CD Reviews , Flipper, Flipper, Love,  More more >
| More


Most Popular
ARTICLES BY RICHARD BECK
Share this entry with Delicious
  •   PLUCK AND DETERMINATION  |  March 09, 2010
    People have always thought that Joanna Newsom was indulgent. At first, it was about her voice — the kind of nasal yelp that usually keeps a performer from getting on stage at all. Then, on her second album, it was about her vocabulary and her instrumentation.
  •   SONG OF HERSELF  |  August 05, 2009
    "Listen, I will go on record saying I love Feist, I love Neko Case. I love that music. But that shit's easy listening for the twentysomethings. It fucking is. It's not hard to listen to any of that stuff."
  •   DJ QUIK AND KURUPT | BLAQKOUT  |  June 15, 2009
    LA hip-hop has two threads, and DJ Quik pulls both of them. The first is g-funk, a production style that relies on deep, open grooves and an endless parade of funk samples.
  •   FLIPPER | LOVE  |  May 26, 2009
    Flipper formed in San Francisco in 1979, and they're remembered three decades later because of a song called "Sex Bomb" that's one of the funniest pieces of music I've ever heard.
  •   ST. VINCENT'S ACTOR GETS A RUN-THROUGH  |  May 26, 2009
    There were not one but two clarinets on stage at the Somerville Theatre on Tuesday night, and that gives you some idea of how intricate Annie Clark's chamber-pop compositions can be.

 See all articles by: RICHARD BECK