These days, most things grotesque, acutely violent or fervently vile do little more than make me turn my head and spend approximately one second of my time taking notice. Perhaps I'm just a product of too many TV gunfights or an exorbitant amount of video game playing, but I've grown indifferent to these seemingly common cultural occurrences. However, I'm by no means fearless. Like everyone, I’ve got an Achilles heel, and Lock Up Your Daughters has launched a perfect arrow of horror in my direction. Nope, it's not the band name that's doing the damage here -- it's what's inside this trio's collective brain that’s the danger.
Listening to Please Bear Please is like checking out original nursery rhymes put to loungy, soothing music. Remember Black Velvet Flag warmly covering Suicidal Tendencies' "Institutionalized", as if it was a delightful love song? Lock Up Your Daughters sails through these six tracks, creating a lush collage of sound that's amazingly resourceful, applying a minimalist approach to an undercurrent of pop. Now that's the making of a nightmare factory if I ever heard one.
This marvelous trio does an excellent job of combining droning synth, dazzling co-ed vocals and casual guitar into a sound that's peaceful, yet distinctly disturbing. Laurel, Mike and John taunt you as the words to "Who's Your Daddy" spill from their lips, making you wonder if this is some sort of cruel, cruel kindergarten kid mind-fuck or just a bunch of musicians having some fun. It sounds all warm 'n' cuddly, but no one could create this kind of music without some sort of evil and twisted secret plan to suck all the gray matter from the world's unsuspecting music fans and critics.
A good drum machine may get you far in the music biz, but an absurd, Casio-friendly drumbeat is what really reels in the discriminating fans. "Joan of Arc" bounces about with an almost ludicrous quality, splats and boings forming the backbeat of this persuasively soothing number. After making it through Please Bear Please, you're left in some sort of nebulous, stupefied state as words about hamsters, curling competitions, my home state of Texas and lobsters roll from the band's lips and bounce around between your ears. Don't take my trembling words as truth; check out Lock Up Your Daughters yourself and prepare to undergo a blissful state of horror, done the way Esquivel would have liked it...if he was blitzed out on PCP.
