"The most obnoxious thing in the history of obnoxious things"

I'd M Thfft Able - Hangin' Flaccid Like a Wet Lilac
Friends and Relatives Records

I'd M Thfft Able (nee Skott Spear of Windham, Maine) is obnoxious. If your friend was this obnoxious, you would flick his ears. If your kid was this obnoxious, you would make him sit on the stairs for a timeout. And then flick his ears. Throughout Hangin' Flaccid Like a Wet Lilac I was compelled to throw down my headphones and walk away, but what cancelled out such witless frustration was a desire to hear something that would top the something that I had just declared "the most obnoxious thing I have heard on this cassette thus far." Then, once I heard this something that I had deemed the new "most obnoxious thing I have heard on this cassette thus far" there was a stiff yearning to hear another "most obnoxious thing I have heard on this cassette thus far" something. The cumulative effect of all this would be the certification of Hangin' Flaccid Like a Wet Lilac as "the most obnoxious thing in the history of obnoxious things."

Opener "This Dusty Erection Lay'midst Peacock Feathers" sounds like someone is flipping through AM stations on a boom box with one blown speaker and nearby lightning is breaking up the signal with crackling static and oh yeah, the boom box is falling down a flight of stairs. Layered over this is what may be the chorus from a song, a deep country song judging by the vocalist's obnoxious twang. "Don't pick the feathers off a peacock," he pleads. "Torch of E-Mails" is driven by this monotone, single-voice chant that could have been done by kids who heard a Gregorian chant, rolled down a steep hill, ate a bunch of cupcakes, and then playfully approximated the chant on a tape recorder, complete with vulgarities.

The song titles—"Pplleeaassiinngg Eenneerrggiieess," "WBLM Always Invisbly Thru Y'chests, Portland"—remind me of Google Chat conversations where participants are in such an I-need-to-quickly-make-my-point frenzy their messages are littered with typos and weird misspellings and indecipherable nonsense.

Recommended—but only if you have no qualms about flicking ears.