A cautionary tale, “Lacquer Head” describes the consequences of sniffing household chemicals to get high. Lead singer Les Claypool rejects the pretentiousness of TV (“Antipop”) and claims to be a faithful friend (“Dirty Drowning Man”). Alcohol, violent movies and pornography are viewed as potentially harmful on “Natural Joe,” but . . .
“Natural Joe”–among other songs–is poisoned by profanity. After searching for comfort in a bottle of Jim Beam, a deeply depressed man escapes his pain through suicide (“He let himself out with two barrels of steel”). On the spoken intro to “Power Man,” a man says he’d wear women’s underwear if called upon to do so. The artist consumes “a diet of black coffee and Prozac buttered toast”(“Mama Didn’t Raise No Fool”) and claims, “I like to taunt/I like to tease/I’ll bring your psyche to its knees” (“Eclectic Electric”). With help from Rage Against the Machine, Primus seems to portray our government as oppressive and tyrannical (“Electric Uncle Sam”).
This is the band that scored a novelty hit in 1995 with the sexually charged music video “Wynona’s Big Brown Beaver.” Nothing that offensive here, but warnings about addictive habits can’t save Antipop from its own dependencies. Profane speech. Bitterness toward authority. Ambiguous references to suicide and cross-dressing. Skip it.
