Scary’s debut earned raves from Pitchfork, Paste, Popmatters and, um, Perez Hilton, giving him the extra burst of chutzpah that must have been necessary to assemble the follow-up, a nutty dozen-song cycle inspired by Thomas Pynchon’s thousand-page doorstop “Against the Day.” The overall effect – at least if you don’t pay any attention to the lyrics – is akin to what Todd Rundgren getting high with Queen and the Electric Light Orchestra in the early ‘80s might have sounded like. If you do pay attention to the lyrics, on the other hand, you’re liable to waver between amused and irritated – and if you lived through the peak of prog rock’s popularity, you may end up suffering (and we do mean suffering) flashbacks. Try to boil Pynchon down to album length, and you’re bound to end up with an unwieldy mess – but whether Scary’s buckshot approach is the result of genius or attention deficit disorder is entirely an open question. The arrangements are tight and the hooks are plentiful, but you get the feeling you wouldn’t want to share an elevator with the guy. (LABEL: Black and Greene 2008
