Satanic Puppeteer Orchestra, Satanic Puppeteer Orchestra

First off, let’s agree that it’s dangerous to build a full-length album around a joke. Even when it’s a good one. Given that, then, it’s bound to be four freakin’ times as dangerous to build a four-CD box set (five, if you count the bonus Unplugged disc, which, ah, you really shouldn’t) around said joke. Gah. The duo that supposedly makes up Satanic Puppeteer Orchestra, robotic vocalist SPO-20 and music-maker Professor B. Miller, grab hold of their single conceit — music sung by a robot! — and run, Forrest Gump-like, from one end of the field to the other and then burst through the gates to head on down the road to nowhere. The only problem is that they’re running the wrong direction.

Now, I’m going to admit something dangerous: I have yet to listen to all five CDs of Satanic Puppeteer Orchestra. God help me, I just can’t subject myself to any more slow-paced, Nintendo-style electro with robot-“read” vocals that all sound like a super-extended version of Radiohead’s “Fitter Happier”; two CDs out of five (The Comeback and Sold Out, to be precise, along with part of B-Sides and Covers) is brain cell-destroying enough, folks. A man can only take so much. I mean, c’mon — not even Strong Bad Sings and Other Type Hits would’ve worked at all if people didn’t already know and love Homestar Runner.

The saddest part of this whole debacle, really, is that the lyrics are actually pretty entertaining, in a Talking Heads-/Andy Kaufman-esque fashion. Heck, I even enjoy their “cover” of The Cure’s “Boys Don’t Cry” (and the roboticized “It’s Still Rock’n’Roll to Me” sounds surprisingly like the original). I have a feeling that culled down to a handful of worthy tracks, Satanic Puppeteer Orchestra would’ve made a darned decent EP.