11-27: Lightning Bolt: Hypermagic Mountain
11-20: Wooden Wand and the Vanishi...: The Flood
10-02: ...: Oboroed/Circus Live...
07-04: Need New Body: Where's Black Ben?
04-09: Caribou: The Milk of Human Kindness
10-13: Sonic Youth: Sonic Nurse
10-13: Things Explod...: It's Never Worked Befor...
10-03: Controller.Controller: History
Music Reviews index


11-09: Three...Extremes
10-19: Battle Royale II
10-04: A History of Violence
08-26: Grizzly Man
08-22: The 40 Year-Old Virgin
08-12: The Dukes of Hazzard
08-05: The Devil's Rejects
08-03: The Island
Movie Reviews index


01-06: List: Best/Worst of 2005: Movies
08-28: List: 2004's 50 Best Albums, Part 2
07-02: List: 2004's Best and Worst Movies
04-20: Article: Mikel Ate That CD
04-20: Interview: Half of the Fiery Furnaces
04-17: List: 2004's 50 Best Albums, Part 1
04-08: List: 2003's 20 Best Albums
Features index


Need New Body: UFO
Need New Body
UFO
File 13: September 16, 2003

87


Need New Body's genre classification often contains the prefix "spaz-", and with good reason. Their sophomore release, UFO, features songs about going to the beach, losing a pen, and just listing random words, with titles such as "Pisscat", "Make Gay Love Not War", and "Giggle Bush Meets CompUSA". From the topics and song titles alone, you may think you've formed a decent idea of what this album may sound like, but only once you hear it do you realize how good it is, how randomly, strangely and insanely musical it is. The end result falls somewhere between the Boredoms, the Residents and the albums you made as a six-year-old (although the Pirates' "Hazardus [sic] Habits" holds more sentimental value to me, it can be argued that, musically, UFO is infinitely better).

The songs on UFO range from noise ("Pisscat") to video game background music ("Tittiepop [In Japan]") to surprisingly talented banjo plucking ("Magic Finger") to goofy high-energy ("Pen", "Beach") to not-so-goofy high-energy ("Ox", "Show Me Your Heart") to spoken word ("Red as a Bone"), etc., etc. Each song is sort of its own sub-genre, and while a complete album of any given one of them might be tiring, annoying or downright terrible, when compiled with all the others, they create a whole that's kind of addictive.

"Show Me Your Heart" is the high point of the album, and probably as accessible as the album gets - its randomness is more catchy and structured than at other points. "Red as a Bone" is a tribute to Captain Beefheart's "The Blimp", with its cryptic (random) vocals and repetitive instrumental background. "Beach" and "Pen" are the heights of energy on the album, and their respective choruses, "Everybody's at the beach!" and "Pen pen pen, where's my pen?", do nothing but add to the infectious sense of fulfillment you get from the fun that the musicians are obviously having with themselves.

This album is not for everyone; in fact, it's definitely for fewer people than it's not for. But if you're in that target percentile, UFO can make for an amazingly enjoyable listen.


quoth Noah Jackson.



1/ Giggle Bush Meets CompUSA
2/ Hot Shot
3/ Moondear
-> 4/ Popfest
5/ Pisscat
6/ Tittiepop (In Japan)
-> 7/ Show Me Your Heart
8/ Powpow
9/ Red as a Bone
10/ Turken Hogan
11/ Make Gay Love Not War
12/ Beach
13/ Magic Finger
-> 14/ Ox
15/ Manglor
16/ I Know
17/ Shark Attack
18/ Need New Age
19/ Dr. Spifflin's Food Drive
20/ Coffee Shop Girl II
-> 21/ Pen
22/ Applesnake
23/ Turn Pillars Into Trees