Dead Milkmen: Eat Your Paisley!

Dead Milkmen: Eat Your Paisley!

1986

Restless Records

Format I Own it on: Compact Disc

Track Listing: 1. Were the Tarantula Lives  2.  Air Crash Museum  3. KKSuck2  4. Fifty Things  5. Happy Is  6. Beach Party Vietnam  7. I Hear Your Name  8. Two Feet Off the Ground  9. The Thing that Only Eats Hippies  10. Six Days  11. Swampland of Desire  12. Take Me Apart  13. Earwig  14. Moron  15. The Fez  16. Vince Lombardi Service Center


 People seem to see this as either the disappointing follow up to "Big Lizard In My Back Yard" or the the best album they ever did..I seem to fall into the "neither" category...However much I love "Big Lizard," I can't shake the feeling it's a bit of a formative effort...Like it was maybe 99% there...To me, the Dead Milkmen really become the Dead Milkmen on "Eat Your Paisley." The sound is cleaned up, they've come to grip with their instruments and the songwriting has greatly improved...The best songs on here surpass the best ones on their previous album, but it's easy to forget about that sometimes because people seem to remember all the wrong ones...

 Sure, "Beach Party Vietnam" and  "The Thing that Only Eats Hippies" are kinda funny (especially the Husker Du shout out in the latter song) but check out "I Hear Your Name," which maintains the humor and adds a sort of sad sweetness. Same with "Take Me Apart"...When it hits that staccato break where Joe takes over lead vocals for a moment:

"I stole! I lied! I cried for you
I nearly died for you!"

His delivery comes off as a comical approximation of Phil Spector girl-group drama ( not the court-room kind) but it hits you  just the same. It's hard to imagine them pulling this off a mere year earlier...

I also usually kind of marvel at "Moron" where Rodney hurls abuse on the title character but in Joe's section he kind of humanizes the moron and you start to genuinely feel a little sorry for him...Poor, moron...I'm also a big fan of "Two Feet Off the Ground," which starts out as chilled-out ska but ends up with Rodney screaming his goddamn head off!!!  One of his most memorable performances, I think...

But as fond I am of the highlights, there's a few things that stop me from calling it my favorite album by the band...First off, it takes awhile for it to finally hit a truly great song..."I Know Where the Tarantula Lives" and "Air Crash Museum" are alright but nothing Earth-shattering...Then "KKSuck2" comes on and that's cool but it's just an instrumental, so the whole thing doesn't really get going until "Fifty Things"... The whole run of songs from "Fifty Things" to "Moron" is all top-notch, but then they lose me again with the over-long (and fairly pointless) "The Fez." The CD ends with "Vince Lombardi Service Center" which is another instrumental, although it's pretty good and highlights how funky Dave Blood had become on the bass...And its placement at the end is a lot more welcome than the too-early placement of "KKSuck2."

So yea, it's neither the disappointing follow up to "Big Lizard" (the high-points are way too high) and it's not my favorite either (one too many tracks that don't do much for me), so what we have is just a solid middle-of-the-road Dead Milkmen album, which is fine by me...I like the middle of the road...That's where all the pretty yellow lines are...

Here's "I Hear Your Name" by the Dead Milkmen...Enjoy...