For Hours and Hours and Hours

Armand Van Helden (featuring Spalding Rockwell) “Jenny” – Though Armand Van Helden’s previous collaboration with Spalding Rockwell was a euphoric electropop single, this new track is more like high energy goth disco. The vocals on the verses are spooky and vacant like A Certain Ratio and the snarled choruses are reminiscent of Garbage, but that’s all just a lead up to a gorgeous breakdown that sounds like it could be the Suicide Girls version of the Go-Gos. (Click here for more about the new Armand Van Helden album at the Southern Fried Records site.)

Neil Hamburger – excerpt from “Great Moments at Di Pressa’s Pizza House” – The latest Neil Hamburger album embraces the mockumentary format and moves away from the stand-up comedy routine established on previous releases. The premise of the record is that Neil is narrating an audio documentary about the pizza parlor where he has been a featured attraction for several years, and most of humor is derived from the characters’ po-faced seriousness regarding ridiculous details and the escalation of their desperation and misfortune. The jokes often hit their mark, but the project seems rather misguided and overly obvious. The mockumentary format is being done to death lately, and the overwhelming majority of them (including this record) are extremely formulaic. Most actors take on the familiar cadences of the characters from Christopher Guest’s movies; often mistaking dry delivery and an air of delusion for actual punchlines. There is almost always a casual contempt for the characters that reveals little more than the creators’ own glib misanthropy. Thanks to some inspired moments of absurdity, Great Moments at Di Pressa’s Pizza House is above average, but it suffers in comparison to the nuanced dark comedy on older Neil Hamburger records like Left For Dead In Malaysia and Laugh Out Lord. (Click here to buy it from Amazon.)