Hot Little Rocket: Danish Documentary

I’m sitting here trying to decide once again what to write about an album that could easily be summed up in one or two sentences. There are the bad albums, and then there are the bad albums. Recordings so lackluster that you just want to pretend like they never existed. This is the most polite way I can describe Hot Little Rocket’s Danish Documentary. But that still isn’t the one or two sentence review that I have come up with for this disc.

No, that review would read as follows. Danish Documentary is quite unlistenable due to the fact that lead singer Andrew Wedderburn caterwauls and wails more than he ever sings, and quite frankly trying to listen to him is a test of one’s taste. The second sentence would probably go something like, “Musically, these guys are similar to Archers of Loaf minus some of the heaviness.”

So there you have it. Hot Little Rocket is not very good. Danish Documentary is one of those albums that make you scratch your head and wonder aloud just who would ever play such a thing. Seriously, though, Wedderburn’s vocals truly are some of the most grating, off key shouts I have heard all year. The guy doesn’t know how to emote subtly. No, he’s up front there, screaming such nonsense as “Yeah, this new disguise rusts up in winter, oughta crate it up for you/Hang out at arrivals getting thinner, strapped instructions on for you/Can’t get what you want, the staple’s stuck you see/There’s no city map with pins where the impact’s been” (“Vive Death!”). Yes. OK. I see that you wax artily, Mr. Andrew. I just wish you could actually sing your non sequiturs.

But he doesn’t, and the rest of the band (guitarist Aaron Smelski, bassist Mark MacArthur, and drummer Joel Nye) locks into cramped riffing, jagged notes, and slipshod rhythms that do not complement Wedderburn in the least. In fact, they just make the whole sound even worse. So who should be cut, the band or the singer? As I said, this is one of those albums that you just wished was never recorded in the first place. But on they go, working against one another through song after song.

You try to figure out the random noodlings of such tunes like “Did Yr Ship Come In?” “Question reads how’d you get a to b, want to be shot from a cannon?/Make sure yr helmet’s tight, memorize seafarers, I’ll be yr stand-in/Looks like another long drive alone uninsured, must’ve expired/Wonder why none of us left around last that long, must be we’re tired” rattles Andrew, hitting each last note at the end of each line like some excited kid about to wet his pants. Nice baby babble there, Wedderburn. Come to think of it, the toddlers might actually enjoy this stuff.

It’s not enough to just be odd for odd’s sake. There is a good way to go about anything, and the noise that Hot Little Rocket creates on Danish Documentary just leaves a lot to be desired. I mean, yeah, it’s cool to try on some different and freaky shoes every now and then, but for the most part, there does tend to be a general cut off marker to let us know when perhaps too much is too much. Hot Little Rocket either didn’t have that marker, or just discarded it completely. It doesn’t matter. I seriously can’t imagine too many people getting into this music. As Huey Lewis once sang so long ago, “sometimes bad is bad”. I can’t think of anyone who could put it better than that.