The Cult Inside My Head: Stalking Horse

“Are you fucked up inside your head?”

“Are you fucked up inside my head?”

Had enough, yet? Well if you just can’t wait to hear those two lines delivered ad nauseum over the course of a painful three minutes, then just jump right into “Entangling”, the fifth track off the debut album of The Cult Inside My Head. This is an album that’s almost painful to go through: former Subtle Plague singer Pat Aspat gathers a slew of Bay Area friends together to make an album of has-been indie rock. Emphasis on “has been”. There are actually two songs that are worse than “Entangling”: the regrettable “look at me I’m cool” rock of “Hip By Association” (and any thoughts of this being a satirical piece are thrown out the window very early on) and the lyrically short “About”. The whole thing comes off like Iggy Pop trying to make a John Frusciante solo album and failing miserably. Yet, this album could’ve easily been a coaster were it not for a few saving tracks: the flower-power rock of “Skin Deep” works well (largely because Aspat didn’t write it) and the stellar bass-heavy “Divided Pointed” which not only rides a hook that’s amazingly strong, but with Aspat’s barely there voice dressed up in distortion, it proves to be the, hands down, most engaging moments on the album. With that said, Aspat’s a pretty good lyricist, but it’s so easy to write off his five-dollar-word lines as the pinnacle of pretentiousness. His vocal delivery and the album’s dry production makes the smarty pants quotient get horribly lost on its journey to the listeners’ ear, but hey — that’s what sophomore albums are for, right?