Sputnik Monroe, We’re Doomed

SCR‘s own Scott Whitt lukewarmly reviewed sputnik Monroe’s first effort, Wake the Sleeping Giant, back in 2007. In that review, his major criticisms seemed to be that Sputnik Monroe failed to live up to the experimental fusion of Muse and Mars Volta that they claimed to be. I can’t speak knowledgably on the subject, as I’m only a passing Muse fan, am barely interested in Mars Volta, and don’t own Wake the Sleeping Giant anyway. All I have to go on is Sputnik Monroe’s latest release, We’re Doomed.

The term “experimental” is thrown around today so much that it has lost all real meaning. Most bands seem to think all you need is a delay petal and all of the sudden you’re Pink Floyd. To me, experimental is John Cage telling his audience that the show is over when the piano eats the bale of hay. Still, I will admit that We’re Doomed is sufficiently left of the dial to warrant the label “oddball,” at least. Set up as a five-chapter story, with two songs mimicking the multi-movements style of Green Day’s “Jesus of Suburbia,” We’re Doomed is almost everything I ask for these days in a CD: it’s short, it’s weird, and it’s got absolutely no chance of ever being on mainstream radio.

The atmosphere of the album cannot be denied. The air is so thick in these tracks I’m surprised my computer doesn’t ooze an oily smoke. It’s a fairly dark album, with Kevin Netzley’s voice rarely exhibiting anything but a kind of desperate neediness. Still, many of the tracks rise out of the synth-y ambience to exhibit the smoother notes of ska or the revivalist energy of the Polyphonic Spree. The true mark of distinction of We’re Doomed, however, is the seamless way that the album progresses. Often, you’ll have no idea that you’ve switched to a new song, and with that in mind, you should view We’re Doomed as a thirty-minute, one-song opera.

And that is the only real drawback of the album, if you can call it that. It really is one song played for thirty minutes. Now, it’s a very very good song, don’t get me wrong, but the album lacks any notable tempo changes, or even real key changes. There is not a lot of up and down in the musical presentation. Rather, you have a sort of continuous slope (is it up or down? Good question…) interspersed with brief rest stops for hamburgers and to use the bathroom. You are in for the long haul, and there is little to be gained by skipping to the end. The damn thing plays like a musical of Camus’s The Stranger, ending on approximately the same melancholy note it began on.

Who’s going to like We’re Doomed? People who stand in the corner and look sad to make friends will like it. Librarians will like it. People who own one (and only one) Legendary Pink Dots Album will like it. People who prefer pencil drawings to watercolors will like it. Do you still believe in the Loch Ness Monster? Then you will probably like it. I like it.