Happy Birthday, Happy Birthday, Sub Pop, 2010

In this case, "bubblegum" refers to gum strings stretching from your sneaker, gum you find on the bottom of a desk, gum in your hair, gum behind your ear, black gum on the subway platform, gum saved in the wrapper to rechew later.† Also Chewels, the 80s gum that squirted gel. Shoplifting gum. Music of gross substances: ketchup and mustard: Kyle makes his voice ooze like a melting cheeseburger. Sauce from the lazy cat's lasagna. (Do we know how the fat John got fat?) I also hear: Rolling Stones tongues, comic book muscles, toothpaste writing, "back in 5 minutes" and "out to lunch" signs, banana peels (on sidewalks, also for smoking), fish bones in garbage cans, jackets with lots of pins, movie marquees, play food, infinite phone cord shoelaces, bottomless spaghetti and meatballs.‡ Music for the the iron-on t-shirt parlor, the video arcade, the drive-in, the drive-thru, for the cassette deck of the compact car of some junior or senior girl in the era of college rock, for John Hughes soundtracks, transistor radios, and MTV. A fantasy of perpetual high school (Kyle Thomas as the Chuck Berry of grunge): drawing checkerboards on your sneakers, opening a football flicked from a crush's desk, running home from school to listen to a song you imagined all day ("ain't no one going to turn me around"), slow-dancing at Homecoming, tripping at school, snorting Adderall and Ritalin, sexting, rollerskating, etc.

†March 16 update: Now that I've bought the CD, I see that album art confirms this suggestion kind of vividly with a drawing of a bubble blown by rotten dentures. This is what missed by reviews that focus on the group's "confectionery" sounds—the grotesque body that's producing them. (I don't mean the band, but the Spirit that animates these songs, the Narrator.)

‡Again, now that I've seen the doodles on the back cover, this seems much less like an insight.

Girls FM: with your ipod on it's easy to imagine everyone is listening to the same thing. (Phish does this to me really bad, though you can be sure no one else is listening to Phish.) American Graffiti: cruising all night through the mind of rock n' roll. Flirty androgyny. Is Kyle famous as a guitar player yet? This song is amazing as soon as that second guitar squawks up the neck; a pinball machine sound. "And the answer won't be hard to find when it's gone now, baby"—this is kind of the philosophical core of the album. Sickening sweetness as the impossible object of desire recedes. "See them play like the infinite band": the infinity is in the aggressive polyrhythms. Wish FM radio was still a thing—sitting on a hill at Y camp, 1984: "Here I am, rock you like a hurricane." Wish albums were still a thing. One evening in early June of 6th grade, I had my dad drive me to Neill's Records and Tapes in downtown Augusta, and I made the existential leap of buying Edie Brickell even though I had gone to get GN'R Lies. I remember the feeling of the night air at Chris Bastey's house when I brought over the tape. No kid who file-shares Happy Birthday will have a memory even remotely like this.

Eyes Music: you know the song where Kyle sings "What went wrong?/I took the drug/I can't remember anything good"? At least he remembered Eyes Music. Amazing winding wide-pupiled melody, like Robyn Hitchcock if he could fully let go. I'm following the shaman on this one. Crocodile bass. Walking in two dimensions. Animal Collective wishes they could do this. Chirrupy keyboard cascades like intelligent beings showing you things (these are Kurt's friends, relatives of the clavioline beings inhabiting Baby You're A Rich Man). Incredible guitar melody that happens only once. "Out of order like ice cubes that grow on palm trees"— Happy Birthday's music feels so visual, but imagery is pretty rare in the lyrics; the (very full) image-world is contained mostly in the attitude of the vocal delivery (which is what rock n' roll is all about). Best middle eight of the millenium. Satanic pleasure. But the coda breaks the trance for me.

Maxine the Teenage Eskimo: the crucial 7th track. Can't believe we get this lucky immediately after Eyes Music. Fagen's Maxine, Moonage Teenage, Dylan's Eskimo. Key lyric: "Maxine the Teenage Eskimo." Maximum synaesthesia: 1:09 to 1:15. Bring in Lacan.

I Want to Stay (I Run Away): genre-destroying violin riff (Ruth)—nothing sounds like this. Police bass and guitar. Wish Happy Birthday would get tapped by Mutt Lange to make the next Hysteria. Chris Weisman would enjoy three years in the studio writing pre-choruses. Sucks for HB that the era of music videos is over.

Pink Strawberry Shake: the most rock and roll swagger, the loosest band sound, the best vocal, and the coolest studio effects. What their phrase "comic book pop gems" refers to.

Zit: a temper tantrum sung by Beavis and Butthead, with immense viral potential; will be the biggest mock angst anthem since "Song 2" (the "woo hoo" song), which has advertised cars and become a standard pump-up song in professional sports arenas. "turning on the lamp"