Bang Bang Boom Cake

%%header%%

%%message%%

Before you get too cynical, let's get one thing straight. These kids can rock. The Tiny Masters of Today are 13-year-old Ivan (no last name given, kinda like Madonna?) and Ada, his 11-year-old sister, and they can play their instruments. They're not virtuosos, but make up for what they lack in chops with energy and chutzpah. They had a couple of home demos they put up on their MySpace page snapped up and released by British label Tigertrap and Bowie declared their music genius. Russell Simins, drummer for the Jon Spencer Blues Explosion, also found the band on MySpace and after meeting their parents, signed on as their drummer. It's not quite a power trio -- there's that question of musical competence -- but the noise they grind out is a heckuva lot of fun, as the young 'uns were once wont to say. This is punk rock at its most pure, a mishmash of stolen licks, plagiarized lyrics, and pure joy that's hard to resist. Stickin' It to the Man, one of their U.K. hits, borrows its lyrics from the Beatles' Hello Goodbye and adds the senseless tag line Stickin' it to the man, stickin' it cause I can. It's doubtful these kids have ever stuck it to anyone, but the track makes it on the raw distorted grind of Ivan's guitar and Simins' pounding drums. Disco Bomb features Fred Schneider howling in the background, a pounding disco rock beat, some unaccredited keyboard effects, and Ramones-like lyrics Disco bomb, we got it goin' on. Tooty Frooty is a driving rocker dominated by the hissing overtones of Simins' crashing cymbals, Radio Riot sounds like the Ramones covering the 13th Floor Elevators with another simplistic lyric -- Radio riot, everybody's gotta try it -- and a guitar solo from Ivan. End of My Rope is a pounding Kinks-like rocker with a vocal so distorted you can't make anything out. On some tracks, one has to suspect some parental, or other adult guidance. Bushy, an anti-Dubya track, opens with a sound bite for George Jr., If this were a dictatorship, it'd be a heck of a lot easier, just so long as I'm the dictator Ada sings, and the words are used loosely, against a thrashing Bo Diddley beat, about not liking Bushy. Trendsetter features guest Kimya Dawson performing one of her amusing free-form rants about the corporate brainwashing of tween consumers. Her husband Angelo Spencer adds some real lead guitar in a primitive, grungy style that complements the thrash of the Tiny Masters. Hologram World features another ringer on guitar, Nicolas Zinner from the Yeah Yeah Yeahs, as well as Karen O helping out on vocals. All that aside, the Tiny Masters are pretty good at constructing short bursts of mindless rock & roll mayhem. As their vocabulary -- lyrical and musical -- outgrows their obvious influences, they may well be a band to contend with. [The CD was also released with bonus tracks.] ~ j. poet, Rovi