Beep Beep

Business Casual (2004)

Scott Heisel

It's dirty. It's sexy. It's violent. It's danceable.

Unfortunately, it's not very memorable.

Beep Beep will probably only matter to most people because Joel Petersen of the Faint/Broken Spindles and Mike Sweeney of Bright Eyes/Statistics/Tilly And The Wall are in the band [as is a guy named Chris Hughes, but it's not the one from Moneen, Autopilot Off, or Tears For Fears]. Once again, the Omaha scene provides an inbred band that Saddle Creek will again try to peddle to kids weaned on import-only Cursive singles. And again, a good amount of kids will pick this up based on it's pedigree, and again, you'll probably see a good number of copies of this in your local used store alongside the newest albums from Now It's Overhead and Mayday.

But anyway. Beep Beep's sound, at its best ["Electronic Wolves"] is an organic version of the Faint, with it's propulsive beats being driven by guitars, not synths. Beep Beep's sound, at its worst, is cringeworthy garage-rock b-sides, with horrendous vocals. The album is at it's best more than it's worst, but the problem lies in repeat listens - I couldn't hum you a single chorus [if there even are any] after this CD finished playing. Now, maybe I just listened to too many Beatles songs growing up, but if you're going to write a song with melody, you need a fucking chorus.

Regardless, this is a decent disc that borders on really good occasionally, but will eventually fall into the back of your CD wallet, never to be played again.

MP3s
I Am The Secretary
Misuse Their Bodies
Vertical Cougar [clip]