Butter 08

(Grand Royal)
by Nik Rainey

In his invaluable research work, Why Stuff Rocks and Stuff, Iam Velcrosier, D.D.S. states that “all rock band side-projects formed while the parent band(s) are still extant should be collectively flung to the ground and buggered repeatedly with an overcooked summer sausage until they weep for mercy and go back to their day jobs at Wal-Mart.” Truer words have never been spoken, except on the audio book version of Nik Rainey Thinks Aloud In Iambic Pentameter (now available in a musty cardboard box near me). Blessedly however, I have found an exception to this hypothesis, which, if you somehow glossed over the graphic immediately to my right, is known as Grand Royal’s Butter 08. To get the requisite swipe from the press kit out of the way, they are Miko Hatori and Yuka Horda from Cibo Matto, Russell Simins from the Jon Spencer Blues Explosion, Mike “No, Not The REM Guy” Mills from the graphic design world, and Rick Lee from the middle of the credit list. And, to quote Robert “What’s a bridge?” Pollard of Guided by Voices, shit yeah, it’s cool. Oleo VIII is the perfect presumptionless garnish for your nutritious beat breakfast, forsaking profundities for shaking pro-fun ditties (ooh, how Nugent of me). It slicks up the crumbs scraped offa hip-hop flip-flop, punk/funk krunk and Nipponese nipple-cheese with gullet-coating aplomb. (Condescending definition: it goes down easy.)

There’s a little bit of everything from horn-driven espresso-bongo-distorto schmutz (“Dick Serious”) to sampled-samba clean-and-jerk (“How Do I Relax”) to a diatribe against looking to Simins as a role model (“Degobrah”) (nothin’ personal, Sim, but I don’t think you’ve got much to fret about on that score), mixing and melding mounds of musical meat like a band on le Garcons de la Beasties’ label should. And there are oddball traits as well: Sean Ono Lennon (think of the mixed genetomusical heritage there) drops an organ solo into “It’s The Rage,” and the title of the final track, “Butterfucker,” can’t help but remind me of Marlon Brando riding Maria Schneider’s Parkay’d poopchute in Last Tango in Paris, which has bupkiss t’do with the actual song, but hey, I gotta show off my cinematic-service-entrance-lovepoke erudition somewhere. (I suppose an analyst’d go to town with the fact that colonic copulation figures so prominently in this piece, but, after all, why do ya think they’re called analysts?)