Flipron: With Breath Bated & Eyelids Unblinking

“My ass is big, my ass is clever”, sings Flipron frontman Jesse Budd with no small amount of gusto over the sort of sad-clown background that such a proclamation deserves. He’s right, after all. His ass is clever, perhaps too much so, if the sound of With Breath Bated & Eyelids Unblinking is any indication. Budd has never met a bit of irony or a quirky turn of phrase that he didn’t like. This little sampler platter of the three Flipron albums so far (with the inclusion of the overtly carnivalesque new track “The Coolest Names in Showbiz”) piles on the wordplay, often sacrificing songcraft for the sake of a lyrical twist. Whether you enjoy Flipron will likely hinge on your feelings about lines like “As my head and my heart / Fought like brothers torn apart / I got caned and completely unable”. Budd sounds a bit like Ian Brown as an eloquent drunkard, while the band around him goes from rock ‘n’ roll to the circus to balladry and back again. Even at the fairly standard length of 12 tracks, With Breath Bated & Eyelids Unblinking is an exhausting listen, but once you plow through it a couple of times, you start to see what Budd’s getting at. At the very least, Flipron’s songs are as fun to read as they are to hear.