Exponential Existential Horror Show

The Loud Family “Sodium Laureth Sulfate”

“Sodium Laureth Sulfate” puts you off balance from the start, blasting you with noise and clips of studio chatter, opening Interbabe Concern in a way that pushes the listener to consider that there’s something wrong with their CD. Once the song shifts into a more normal but still off-kilter pop structure it’s a different sort of fractured, with Scott Miller singing from two perspectives, one of which is rudely interrupting the other:

So you’ve got a new girl, better tell us all
about her
    well, we met—
No, we were thinking of lascivious detail

I love this as the start of a song, immediately cutting through the bullshit to nudge the song into something less mundane. Of course, instead of getting something sexy, the other guy gives us something…more descriptive:

she’s a little like
tendon-slash dimension crash entropica
cryogen magenta kevlar ebola

As the song goes along we never get a clear picture of this woman, but we do get the gist of the situation – she’s stringing him along, she’s distant, she’s emotionally brutal, she’s fascinating. The other guy is concerned, but this dude is too far gone – “and the zero times she calls me back refine my soul.” He’s beyond rationalizing her behavior, she’s giving him exactly what he craves: high drama and casual cruelty! As a wise woman would write many years later: “Boys only want love if it’s torture.”

Buy it from Amazon.