Review: Straight Outta Lynwood

After last Sunday’s premier of a Robot Chicken episode that featured a Weird Al video, the Adult Swim bump said something to the effect of: “If you took a time machine back to 1986 and said, in 20 years, Micheal Jackson = flamed out, Weird Al = still relevant, we’d have laughed our asses off.”

Not only is that true, but Al’s new album shows an amazing versatility, and a master of the parody maker’s art. Herein I dissect the new album track by track and give an overview of the animated music videos contained on the dual-disc release.

Full Disclosure / Name Dropping: I have met Weird Al, and he is a friend of a friend.

Track 1 is “White & Nerdy”, a rap parody of “Ridin'” by Chamillionaire. I am not familiar with the original song, but Al does an excellent job here of tossing in as many white and nerdy references as he can. It’s a song that is well served by its non-animated music video in showing you all the rapid-fire references in the song (my favorite being rolling dice for D&D in an alley.)

Track 2 is “Pancreas.” This is an Al original, but definitely a Brian Wilson style parody. Al really shows off his musical ear here with the layered vocals, but I miss the days where his style parodies’ subject matter related to the subject matter of the original artists: “Dare to be Stupid” and “Everything You Know is Wrong” are great examples. This track is, well, a love song to one’s pancreas, the best part being his citation of Newton’s Universal Gravitation. The video consists of spliced together 50’s stock footage with some extra added Pancreases. The video didn’t do much for me, but I don’t know what I would have done instead with a song about an organ done in the style of a Beach Boy!

Track 3 is “Canadian Idiot”, a parody of Green Day’s “American Idiot.” This is one of the more “obvious” parodies, it sounds like the original, and makes a lot of Canadian jokes (sorry Elena & Sion!), but doesn’t suceed in being all that funny.

Track 4 is “I’ll Sue Ya” which sounds, to me, in the style of white rock-rap bands like Limp Bizkit and Kid Rock. It also is one of the funnier songs on the album, as he references the wrong way to use products by major companies, but plenty of times in ways you don’t expect. There is an animated video included on the DVD side, done by the guy who did the excellent Star Wars Gangsta Rap (and it was easy to tell right away.) The video carefully avoids using any actual trademarked images, so it has the added fun of looking at parody logos, very much in Al style.

Track 5 is “Polkarama!”, and for me, the most dissapointing track on the album. It is Al’s standard polka format: take a bunch of popular songs, polka-ize them, and run them all together. The polka on the last album was sheer genius: he picked a theme for the polka, chose songs of greatly different styles, and made a really interesting rolling polka. In contrast, this one feels very “phoned in”, like it was just expected of him. However, I will say hearing Al sing “Don’t cha wish your girlfriend was a freak like me” is very funny. Someone on YouTube put this polka together with the music videos of the parodied songs which is worth checking out by itself.

Track 6 is “Virus Alert”, and I am of two minds about it. First off, the music is very rich and epic-feeling, not that far off from “Hardware Store” of the last album. Lyrically, it’s amusing… unfortunatly, I’ve heard a song that has the exact same lyrical concept! “Badtimes” by Laika (which either started or was based off a virus hoax) uses the same idea of a fictional computer virus does a lot of things computer virii can’t actually do. It sort of soured the song for me, but it is a fine sounding song, so I’m sure you all can listen to it with more of an open mind. This one has an animated music video that is pretty neat and flows well.

Following that is “Confessions Part 3”, a parody of “Confessions Part 2” by Usher. This is one of the more inspired tracks on the album- instead of just being a parody to the actual song, it’s an actual sequel, and he says so in the lyrics. Once you’ve gotten the “had a child by another woman” thing out of the way… well, here comes all the other stuff! An awesome concept for a song parody, and while Al’s voice isn’t quite as smooth as Usher’s, it still communicates the idea perfectly. (Not only that, be he alludes to a possible “Confessions Part 4!”)

Next is “Weasel Stomping Day” which has an animated music video done by the Robot Chicken team, including an action-figure Al. The concept is straight out of “The Simpsons” Whacking Day… a holiday where a lot of animals are killed. The song is done in the style of an upbeat holiday march, and features a strong backup vocal section. The song wasn’t particularly funny, but the concept is solid, as are the weasel stomping sounds.

9 is a song called “Close But No Cigar”, about someone who dates a series of near-perfect women… the operative word being “near.” The narrator describes at length how great the women he’s dating are, but then finds one small imperfection which then launches into the chorus. I didn’t catch it the first listen, but I’m now sure that this is a style parody of Cake. (The telling part is during the chorus where Al sings “Oh yeah, all right” exactly as Cake does.) The song is very fun, especially if you’re a fan of the style of Cake, and the evolving chorus fits nicely. The video is done by John K. of Ren & Stimpy fame, and is worth checking on just on that fact alone.

Track 10 is “Do I Creep You Out”, a parody of “Do I Make You Proud” by Taylor Hicks. I don’t have much to say about this one, it’s probably more interesting to those who have heard the original and/or American Idol fans.

The Penultimate song fills a new Al tradition: really long songs. “Trapped in the Drive-Thru”, a parody of R. Kelly’s “Trapped in the Closet”, clocks in at nearly 11 minutes long. Unlike his previous long-form songs, this is a parody, which R. Kelly’s epic saga lent itself to. It’s a great tale of married minutiae, and should remind listeners of very real situations played up humorously, with various crescendos to emphasize the “action.” It even has a twist ending!

The final song on the album is “Don’t Download this Song”, a cautionary athem about the dangers of downloading music off the internet (as the RIAA would have you believe.) The whole thing is done in the style of “swaying fundraising song”, and even adds a subtle dig at Metallica. The video is done by animator Bill Plympton, and fits the mood of the song quite well, even though the video is done in a very different style than the other videos.

Also included is a “Behind the Scenes” look at the making of the songs in the album, including how the weasel sounds were made.

Overall, Weird Al fans are going to find the usual elements, but even if you don’t usually get his albums, there’s a lot of original content and at least one song should appeal to anyone due to the large variety of styles represented. The album is also very heavy on original music, and most of it is quite good. Plus, you get 6 music videos on top of the album for no added charge. A good value, and a solid album, proving that Weird Al is totally relevant.