WHAAAAAAAAAAA-OOOOO! WHAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA-OOOOO!

[Ernest]

THE HANDS OF THE GENIUS ARE SOOOOOOOO COLD!

[Sox]

YOUR HANDS WOULD BE TOOOOOOO
IF YOU CAUGHT SOME KICKER BY THE NECK AND TOLD HIM
HE'D BETTER STAY AWAKE BECAUSE THE SPIES ARE COMING

[Luke C]

Errm.
What?

[tommydski]

I never get sick of this album or the one that follows it. Never ever.

It's hard to put into words the brilliance of Brainiac because they were so deconstructed. Like some strange bio-mechanical amphibian scuttling around, legs flailing, giant eyes flashing, extended tongue flapping in the wind. Absolutely one of a kind. I think a massive part of that was those absolutely ridiculous riffs. Tim Taylor was an incredibly versatile vocalist but I think the best thing about the band was his partnership with John Schmersal. There was an elasticity to their playing which had a natural contempt for conventional composition. You can hear shards of Rockabilly, Surf Rock, Blues and Industrial but there's also a fluidity that doesn't belong to any of those styles. With those riffs, the rhythm section could have been hopeless and they'd still have been a good band. As it happened, they had a fucking incredible drummer and bassist. Plus a grinning, tripolar maniac of a frontman capable of creating digital tapestries of noise from his voice box, a moog and a couple of beaten microphones.

I think the lasting appeal is that every song has one of those 'Brainiac Moments' when you naturally start looking around for someone to high five because it feels like someone's just emptied a cocktail of ice, vermouth, tropical fruit, rum and acid down your throat. Tim singing both male and female harmony on 'Hot Metal Dobermans' but changing the personal pronouns in the lyrics. The honks of alto saxophone on 'Radio Apeshot'. The brief second of respite between 'Transmissions after Zero' and 'Juicy (On a Cadillac)' which somehow makes the latter seem one hundred percent sweeter. "ERRR THAT'S INCORRECT THE ANSWER IS........ONE TWO THREE FOUR!" The way Tim sings "book" on 'Flypaper'. John Schmersal's gut wrenching scream during 'To the Baby Counter' as if overcome by a sudden fury that his creator saw fit to give him but one pair of hands to wreak his alien magic on the world at large. The way 'Indian Poker (Part 3)' segues into the unbelievably danceable 'Pussyfootin' and finally into the downright obnoxious 'Vincent Come on Down'. So many more that I could never record them all here. These were the moments and I think I still find a new one every time I listen.

Last year we had a brief chat about how we couldn't believe that it had been a decade since the end of Brainiac. A decade since Tim Taylor mounted an amp mid-song to perform some bizarre gesture in the sky. A decade since Tyler Trent rose from his drum-stool just for extra leverage to hit his drums that bit harder, screaming incandescently all the while. A decade since John Schmersal stamped on a pedal with his heel at the exact right moment in the song. A decade since Juan Monasterio lit a cigarette between songs and casually air-drummed with it until it was time for his bass to make its rumbling entrance. A decade since Tim Taylor left the studio in his beaten up Mercedes Benz and never made it home.

Salut Brainiac! We are thinking of you today!

[Kai]

I had a bunch of people over at my house yesterday and I put Bonsai Superstar on. I don't know if this was the best party decision ever or worst party decision ever, and i am pretty much wagering on both.

[Ernest]

I love Brainiac because their song titles and sounds sound like what is constantly going on in my head, particularly in my more neurotic frenzies.  It's so perfectly nonsensical and dorky, yet cool and interesting.  That wonderful squealing noise on the chorus of "Sexual Frustration" does it for me every time.  And "Pussyfootin'" has to be one of their absolute best songs, hands down.  Every part of it is so perfectly Brainiac, right down to the almost conventional guitar jam at the end.  Also, nobody mentioned "Kiss Me U Jacked Up Jerk," but I'm going to because I fucking love that song and can't resist pounding the steering wheel with my hand any time I hear "sixteen seconds agooooooo" in the car.

Brainiac can have stupid lyrics if they want, because their sound is so perfect for it.  Not to mention that a lot of the seemingly nonsensical lyrics are quite clever, such as the one I started this topic with. 

Also, thank you Kai for posting Bonsai Superstar on our piracy thread, thus forever changing my life.

[Scandanavian War Machine]

i have never listened to Brainiac but Tommy's post has me thinking that this might be a problem that needs my immediate attention.

basically, what i am saying is that i really like reading things that Tommy writes and also i'm going to check out this Brainiac band.

[voidSkipper]

<stuff>

Where I come from, we usually just shorten that to "yee-haw!"

[valley_parade]

I was really hoping this was going to be a Teenage Bottlerocket thread.

[amok]

we come from the land of the ice and snow!

oh, nevermind

[Nodaisho]

I'm glad I wasn't the only one that thought that, amok.

[Ernest]

Electro-Shock for President has basically ruled my brain for the past couple of days.  I've been listening to it practically non-stop, and it makes me really angry that fate didn't allow Brainiac to make another album, as Electro-Shock was supposed to be a teaser for their next full-length

here is some shit I wrote about it when I was baked last night:

as far as the purely new-style Brainiac song is shaping up, we get "Fresh New Eyes," which comes together exactly as it should in that regard, complete with more explicitly vulgar images in the lyrics than we have been used to with Brainiac (usually they just don't make sense)

and at the end, their other strong effort on this teaser-EP, "Mr. Fingers," chronicles the exploits of a voyeur-by-chance who is afraid of his own fingers, as he has made them God in his mind. the fingers are what "tell [him] not to do." they are his moral guide, and they tell him to use his eyes instead, and so he gets caught spying on a girl and her brother calls the cops on him and gets him arrested. this song is more typically Brainiac -sounding than "Fresh New Eyes," as it incorporates consistent actual drumming and bass playing, though synths and other noises are still forefront
_________________________________________________________________________________________________________

and this stuff is from just now, when I was not baked:

and now I've come to realize what a sterling effort "Flash Ram" is.  it's quite robotic, which turned me off at first, but that roboticity (?) gives way to more of a traditional Brainiac pop style in the chorus, while during the verse giving us all sorts of interesting beeps and boops.  the whole song maintains that wonderful obnoxious, poppy-noisy, almost cutesy quality that is prevalent in all of Brainiac's work, and yet the sound is quite a bit different than normal

I think this EP works so well because it takes away almost all of the emphasis on guitars that was in their previous work and replaces it with spacey, repetitive electronic sounds.  and since Brainiac's material evokes crazy neurosis anyway, these sounds work fantastically

[Ernest]

I'm not sure if the guy in "Mr. Fingers" is really a "voyeur-by-chance," but I like how that sounds, and when I wrote it I was high

[tommydski]

I didn't think much of that EP.

It made them sound really ordinary.

[Sox]

But those songs slayed live. Especially Flash Ram, which I maintain is a fantastic song. The electro-shock material held up better on bootlegs than a lot of the Bonsai Superstar material! But I guess by that point, they had sorta forgotten all the old songs and were relying mostly on luck to pull them off live.

[skydivingninja]

I thought this was going to be a homage to Jame LaBrie's F# in "Learning to Live."  I was proven to be very, very wrong.