The Humpers

Plastique Valentine (Epitaph)
by Jon Sarre

I dunno about you, but I’m pretty suspicious of holiday-themed concept records (or concept records in general – come to think of it, I’m suspicious of pretty much everything). Back to the holiday thing, I figure if you can think up twelve or fifteen songs about how much you hate Groundhog Day, you’d either get very repetitive very fast, or actually unknowingly reveal your secret admiration for that oversized rodent and his shadow to the entire world. See, if y’can think of enough reasons to hate anything, you probably don’t hate it at all.

Then we come to Valentine’s Day, probably, as holidays go, as bad as it gets (see last issue’s Editor’s rant; Scott touched, burned, and stabbed his way through all the relevant bases). Add The Humpers to the mix, well, I don’t have anything personal against those guys, but I could imagine Plastique Valentine turning into an oddly pro-sentimental romantic holocaust with everyone deciding that they do indeed love everything.
I’m happy to say that I was way off the mark on that one. Not only is this record full of cool hate songs like “Sick of Tomorrow Today,” “Say Goodbye,” “Here Comes Nothing” – a blatant Mudhoney rip-off, but nine outta ten Offspring fans can’t tell the difference – and let’s not forget “Table of Luv” (with wonderful sentiments like “You’ve got a big fat ass”), but said hate songs are pretty believable, as well as funny as hell. Plastique Valentine is mean, snotty stuff and not just for Valentine’s Day. You can play this record all year ’round!

Let The Humpers bring out the misanthrope in you. Buy a copy for yourself, or better yet (‘cos CDs make great gifts), buy one for your significant other and then dump ’em with the explanation, “This Humpers disc will explain things better than I could.” Since free CDs make the best gifts, I contemplated giving Plastique Valentine to my girlfriend for the annual February 14 “It’s Sometime Between Christmas and Easter, So How ‘Bout Spending Some Money?” Day. After some thought I figured “Screw that, let her buy her own copy. I’m keepin’ this one for myself.”