Ambivalence and the Beaker Album

If the toys aren’t broken, you’re not really playing yet. Fat Worm’s ninth release unstitches pop itself and expertly drapes it in drool. From common instruments: guitar, drum, vocal, and bass comes a crowd of unlabored sounds, surging on burnt Bambi legs, a melting forest of crisscross gone limp, crashing over and again into perfect place. It’d be dumb luck, except it never quits.Singing, which ruins so many a band, is for Fat Worm the insane face atop the hulking freak. It belongs there, blurting in sardonic falsetto that careens high then higher into dentist drill . Drums get up in the way of ten flailing limbs, guitar buzzsaws timbres stirring up a magnetic dust that seems to steer itself. Grab on! A forty-five minute surge of Fat Worm is about to wash in and drown your eyes dead.