P

(Capitol)
by Chris Adams

Any project that involves a partnership between Johnny Depp and Butthole Surfer Gibby Haynes is bound to be pretty weird, and, on that level, P doesn’t disappoint – in fact, as a whole, the album is totally fucked. It careens between a shitload of genres and styles, not so much exploring them as mowing them over in a souped-up, rotgut-fueled, slobbering, Big Daddy Roth juggernaut hotrod.

The cover of Abba’s “Dancing Queen,” replete with sitars and mellotrons, sounds like the Strawberry Alarm Clock doing some screwed hybrid of bad Vegas lounge music and seventies disco. “John Glenn” is, appropriately enough, really spacy – a sort of acid-spiked grain-alcohol dub for sociopaths. “Die Anne” is a touching narrative spoken over an exquisitely sensitive “Unchained Melody”-style guitar in which the speaker suggests that his innocent young love kill herself. (There wasn’t a dry eye left in my house when Haynes reached the heart-rending denouement “I didn’t know I was a dentist/until I took out all my teeth.”)

For the most part, Gibby’s pretty content to play his standard role of the Neanderthal white-trash psychobabble preacher, which is just as unsettling as ever. (Most of the “lyrics” are hard to catch, but one involved wiping a dick on Nikita Kruschev, and another involved having sex with a policeman and his son while surrounded by lesbian veterinarians – y’know, the usual.) Other artists involved with this album include Flea from the Chili Peppers, ex-Pistol Steve Jones, and blues-rock veteran Bill Carter. In conclusion, P is a cheap tequila-swilling, stinking, sweaty, Juggs-magazine- reading, lost weekend of an album, and it’s fucking terrifying. I have no idea why this band exists or what the hell they plan to do, but I don’t think we’re on 21 Jump Street anymore, Toto. Mom’s birthday present.