Strange Music for Strange Times

A month or two into the pandemic, a fun “your favorite albums” tag was getting posted around Facebook, but my first thought was to choose albums that were not just among my favorites of all-time but were also on the weirder side of things, mainly just based on personal taste and preference. Weird music has always been a big part of rock history and of my own music collection, and there’s no better time for strange music than these exponentially strange times. If you aren’t already well-acquainted with the albums and groups that follow, they are all waiting to become your new favorites!
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Weird Al Yankovic-Dare to Be Stupid

First and foremost, all of Weird Al's records are great. Seriously. Some may be a bit better or a bit funnier than others, but they are all more than entertaining and, starting in the late '80s, progressively well-produced. This particular album not only introduced me to the brilliance of The Weird One, but it led me down the rabbit hole of novelty songs, parodies, and generally "funny music" that included so many wonderful songs and artists on the syndicated Dr. Demento radio show, especially in the early to mid '90s. Hits like the Madonna parody, “Like a Surgeon,” the classic Kinks parody, “Yoda,” and the unforgettable title track will stand out the most at first, but “I Want a New Duck,” “This Is the Life,” and “Cable TV” will become just as beloved as they each get hopelessly stuck in your head after even one or two listens. The finale, “Hooked on Polkas” was Al’s second polka medley but his first to feature comical arrangements of contemporary songs (obviously the best way they could be presented, of course) making this particular polka (and the medley from the following LP) a hilarious revue of many of the biggest hits of the ‘80s.

“But I want it WEIRDER!” Again, you can’t go wrong with any of Weird Al’s 15 albums, but don’t sleep on later era stand-outs like 2002’s Poodle Hat or 2011’s Alpocalypse, each including some of the most impressively arranged, performed, and produced funny music of all time and each with fun and notable guest appearances throughout.

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They Might Be Giants-Flood
Like many other people, I was introduced to the music of They Might Be Giants through an appearance of two of their songs on an episode of Tiny Toon Adventures. After learning they were not only a real band (what!?) but that their music was available outside of animated children’s TV, they quickly became a personal favorite that still sit high above almost everything else.

The partnership between vocalists/multi-instrumentalists, John Linnell and John Flansburgh, traces back to their high school days but began in earnest nearly 40 years ago and continues today. Blending elements of influences that included Talking Heads, Elvis Costello, and The Ramones along with artier and experimental groups like The Residents, TMBG fused the early days of hip hop, electronic, and new wave into intelligent and ironic pop songs that referenced any and all genres of music.

Flood, the band’s third LP, is their most well-known, significant, and popular album, and while it only represents a portion of the brilliance of this project, it still serves as a perfect introduction to what they do, how they sound, and what they're all about. While often described as "alternative rock," "college rock," or "new wave," TMBG are true originals and their creative experimentation and wit make them one of the very best "weird" bands you'll ever have the pleasure to encounter. Flood includes some of TMBG's biggest songs, including "Birdhouse in Your Soul," "Particle Man," and their cover of the 4 Lads', "Istanbul," but every note and lyric are nearly perfect throughout the LP.

“But I want it WEIRDER!” Many of TMBGs songs blend both the sane and insane alike, so plenty of strangeness can be found on any of their 22 LPs or collections, but some of the weirdest of all can be found on 1992’s Apollo 18, 2004’s The Spine, and 2007’s The Else, not to mention 2005’s Venue Songs (a collection of original songs written about the many places the band was performing on their 2004 summer tour, while they were on the tour), and don’t shy away from their excellent children’s albums which contain some of the weirdest tracks they’ve ever released!

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System of a Down
In the world of heavy rock and metal, being "weird" is not particularly common (and usually doesn't work very well). It takes a very special set of ideas and combination of players to really pull it off and do something interesting musically and/or lyrically on top of it. By time Nu Metal rose to prominence in the late '90s and into the early '00s, one such band emerged as not just the best "weird" heavy band among the lot, but arguably the very best in their sub-genre, "weird" or otherwise.

My first memories of System of a Down were seeing them at Ozzfest '99, early in the day on the main stage, and feeling completely confounded about their changes, time signatures, insane presentation, and fusion of so many other types of music, including jazz, polka, and traditional, middle eastern melodies and references. Standout songs like "Suite-Pee," "Sugar," and "DDevil" are immediately and completely engaging and sound nothing at all like the band's contemporaries (which helped them stand out even more among the pack of newer, heavy bands around the turn of the century).

Between the Rick Rubin production, the tight performances, and the thought-provoking themes and lyrics throughout, the band's self-titled debut is unlike anything before it, in metal and beyond, and while their style was perfected even more on their subsequent LPs, this album best represents everything they are about and laid the foundation for a band that ended up creating some of the best heavy music of the 21st century (so far?). A few listens through the band’s self-titled debut LP will either hook you hard or send you running in the other direction, but you’ll definitely know how you feel about their style and music!

“But I want it WEIRDER!” If you’re new to SOAD and checking things out for the first or second time, moving right into the band’s second (and best) album, Toxicity, makes the most sense, but if you’re looking for their strangest songs, go a step further and try Steal This Album! which includes songs that were essentially considered too weird for Toxicity but were written and recorded around the same time. Upon visiting the studio during the recording process, guitar god, Tom Morello, referred to the tracks as, “crazy people music.”

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Mr. Bungle-California

Mr. Bungle's California is insane. The group, one of many featuring Faith No More vocalist, Mike Patton, began in the early ‘80s, when its members were in high school, but seized the opportunity to issue their madness on major label releases throughout the ‘90s. Released in 1999, just months before they broke up, this album features about as much of the musical universe as can possibly be packed into 10 songs. Everything from light rock, surf, cartoon scoring, death metal, polka, world music, free form jazz, and all blends of rock fusion weave in and out of each track, making not just each song sound like it's by a different band, but it quickly gets to where each song sounds like it features sections from 2 or 3 different bands, punching in and out at different points. The skill and discipline needed to not only write and record but also perform these songs over and over on stage is mind boggling, and with each member of the group throwing multiple instruments, samples, and vocals into the mix throughout, it becomes quickly hard to discern who is doing what, how they're doing it, and, eventually, WHY they are doing it! It's even more impressive to discover that such madness was written and recorded without chemical dependence or enhancement, in spite of seeming evidence otherwise here and there in the lyrics and production, not dissimilar to much of Frank Zappa's most challenging and experimental work, also made drug-free. This album is note-perfect from top to bottom, and considering the complexity and cacophony of some of these pieces, that’s saying a lot! It is unlike any other album by any other project, including other bands that feature members of Mr. Bungle, and it is unique among Bungle's albums as well. If you have not yet had the absolute pleasure to treat your ears and brain to Mr. Bungle's final album, do your soul a favor and check it out!

“But I Want It WEIRDER!” When you’re ready to take things a step further, try 1991’s Mr. Bungle, the band’s major-label debut which leans more on funk and metal within the insanity, and 1995’s Disco Volante which sees the band attempt their own brand of demented jazz-fusion and is arguably their most challenging work to hear and to digest.

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Frank Zappa and The Mothers of Invention-We’re Only in It for the Money
The musical world of Frank Zappa is an experience unlike that of listening to any other artist. Having released more than 60 LPs in his own lifetime (with nearly as many that having now been released posthumously), Zappa's catalog has a density virtually unseen outside of Bob Dylan, They Might Be Giants, and Guided By Voices. His fusion of classical influences with modern sounds and styles functioned at times as a reverential tribute or sincere attempt to compete with the legendary composers and at other times as biting satire, political muckraking, or social commentary on contemporary American life, albeit from Zappa's perspective.

Way back in 1968 (only 9 months after The Beatles released Sgt. Pepper), the band with which Zappa first found success, The Mothers of Invention, released their 3rd LP, We're Only in It for the Money, a 19-song musical freak out that satirizes the late-'60s counterculture while simultaneously participating in it (in present tense as it was still growing).

The album makes no sense from the moment it begins and almost goes out of its way to both start and end in ways that challenge the listener to bear with the false starts and excessive noise that could last for two seconds or several minutes. Who knows!? :) An awkward bit of studio dialog repeats twice within the first three songs, making the listener wonder whether they're partying a bit too hard, have a skip in their record, or both. The use of varying tape speeds on many of the vocals (also pioneered by Lennon-McCartney) plants the seeds for groups like Ween, Big Dumb Face, and many of Mike Patton's projects to sprout from in future decades. With songs that come down on the cops, the parents, and even the hippies themselves, the lyrical tone is extremely critical or tells strange tales about strange characters to illustrate many of those same points. Beyond all of this, the mix and the arrangements are generally very weird, can sometimes be disorienting, and change in abrupt, choppy ways at awkward moments that make the album feel spliced together with little care (or by an amateur) and make the album flow often seamlessly from song to song. Without the lyric sheet in front of you (also included), it's hard to tell when one song ends and the next begins in some sections, supporting the idea of a concept album while making fun of the very first and most famous concept album of all time.

We're Only in It for the Money is not the best Frank Zappa album (or maybe even his best work with the original Mothers, though I might argue otherwise) but it was my gateway into the enormous, engaging, and brilliantly bizarre world of his music. First-timers are probably better off starting with the early '70s LPs, Over-Nite Sensation and Apostrophe, but this album represents his '60s sound and style as well as any of the others from that era and with that band, and it is a complete trip (in just under 40 minutes)!

“But I Want It WEIRDER!” There is certainly no shortness of weirdness in Zappa’s catalog, but one of his greatest, experimental achievements was the early collage album, Lumpy Gravy, which is book ended by Civilization Phase III, released just after his death. The side-length song suite, “Billy the Mountain” (from 1972’s Just Another Band from L.A.) might be Zappa’s most impressively weird long song, but the flabbergasting, 8-sided LP, Lather, compiling both live and studio recordings from the late '70s, but only released in 1996, contains a little bit of almost everything Zappa did best stretched out over a long, long listen!

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Fantomas
After getting well into Mike Patton's work with Mr. Bungle and deeper into Faith No More and Tomahawk, when I finally made it to checking out Fantomas, I thought I was well prepared and that even if it was really crazy, I wouldn't be shocked. Wrong.

It must be challenging to be the kind of musician that would be in a band like Fantomas (also featuring members of Slayer, Melvins, and Mr. Bungle) because there would always be a drive to do something weirder and more original with every new song and release. I'm not sure one could get much weirder than any of Fantomas' four LPs, but their self-titled debut from 1999 is just as good a place to start as any, and it certainly summarizes the band's sound and style, which is to say there is one, but that's another discussion.

Fantomas pushes it to the greatest degree at all times. Primarily a dark or even goth-based heavy metal band, songs can range from only a few seconds to several minutes in length. They rarely repeat musical segments or sections and are constantly changing throughout, with references to cartoon scores and various samples within the metal. Nearly every song contains vocals, but only cover songs contain lyrics as Patton's mad-jazz vocal attack runs amok during and between the dynamic musical spikes. The band leaves a lot of the work up to the audience. Their first album's songs are simply titled page numbers in a comic book (literally pages 1-30); the second album contains original arrangements of classic movie and TV scores; the third is an 80-minute album with only one track; and their fourth is a salute to the month of April, 2005, with a song for each day of the month (while also serving as a tribute to Looney Tunes composer, Carl Stalling).

This is certainly not music for everyone, and it will get rid of an average crowd quickly if you need to clear a room, but if you're into metal, prog, math-rock, jazz fusion, or avant garde art rock, there's a lot to appreciate and take in on each of the band's releases. I still don't think I've yet encountered a band with music more insane than this.

“But I Want It WEIRDER!” all of Fantomas’ albums are approaching maximum-weirdness as it is, but to add a bit of visual accompaniment to their production, check out their two official live DVDs, The Director's Cut Live: A New Year's Revolution and Live from London 2006 (w/the Fantomas/Melvins Big Band). There may never be another opportunity to see the band live, so these filmed performances might be as close as you can get.

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The Mars Volta-Frances the Mute

What a sound and style The Mars Volta had, and while this album (their second, from 2005) is their most accessible (arguably), it is still full of the psychedelic-prog fusion for which they are known, and each track challenges the listener to journey into new and different musical, artistic, and emotional territories throughout.

Essentially the partnership between guitar whiz, Omar Rodriguez-Lopez, and vocalist, Cedric Bixler-Zavala, a rotating cast of majorly-talented supporting players were also featured throughout the group's tenure, including Queens of the Stone Age drummer, Jon Theodore, and the late keyboardist, Ikey Owens, both of whom are also featured on Frances the Mute. Musically, the group was an openly drug-fueled blend of punk, psychedelic rock, salsa, Mexican folk, jazz, and electronic music with songs that varied in tone, genre, and dynamic on each of their 6 albums. Frances the Mute highlights the best elements of the project while keeping the changes varied and regular enough to make most tracks engaging even as they stretch into and beyond 10 minutes, as they regularly do here. (On stage, some of these songs morphed from 13 minutes to as many as 45, depending on the show).

This record is so long and dense that they couldn't fit all 7 songs onto a standard CD, so the prologue to the vague concept album was released on a separate single alongside the LP. Those 13 optional minutes set the stage for the rest which often leans hard into extremely fast and frantic energy or slows briefly for haunted reflection. Lyrics switch between English and Spanish so regularly that the difference becomes unnoticeable after the second or third listen, and once you take the time to look up or translate the Spanish, you'll see it is just as abstract and seemingly nonsensical as the English lyrics! Zavala's words and titles evoke and musically represent the surreal dreamscapes of the legendary artist, Salvador Dali, as much as they directly reference any other influential poet, lyricist, or musician. This all works well within the prog-rock angle of the band's style, but it makes it damned tough to truly understand what the hell these songs are about most of the time, if anything at all!

The 32-minute closer, "Cassandra Gemini," packs just about everything into one long song and serves well as a climax and conclusion that eventually ties back to the prologue, nearly in the style of Pink Floyd's The Wall, also a major influence to The Mars Volta. With guest appearances from Flea and John Frusciante of Red Hot Chili Peppers to round out the top-tier playing and production, Frances the Mute is one of the most engaging and weirdest prog or psych-rock albums to come along so far this century.

“But I Want It WEIRDER!” There’s no shortage of strangeness in The Mars Volta’s catalog, but their weirdest music of all was featured on the two releases that followed Frances the Mute. Scabdates, an 80 minute live album that contains only three actual songs, was released later the same year (though it was recorded prior to Frances the Mute) and is full of even crazier production, sampling, and audio collage. 2006’s Amputechure is probably the band’s most challenging LP, collecting a set of lengthy, dense, psych-prog songs with haunting acoustic tracks to bookend them, continuing to explore the many tones and styles they developed on Frances, but with the weird button cranked up to 11!

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Gorillaz
Originally a side project for Blur singer, Damon Albarn, and his cartoonist friend, Jamie Hewlett, Gorillaz was first created to comment on the vapid pop music from the turn of the century, but it's the way they did it that makes the project so interesting, as it now rolls into 20 years of existence.

All 4 members of Gorillaz are cartoon characters, and when cartoons attempt to write or perform music, they can usually play and sound like just about anything, which is the real genius of the band and especially of their first album. Emerging just before mash-up songs became a fad in the '00s, Gorilliaz themselves are a mash-up of influences, styles, and sounds from every corner of the musical landscape. Rather than limiting it to only rock or hip hop elements, pieces of electronic, jazz, and world music weave in and out of each song as well, allowing a long and impressive list of guests to appear on each of the band's records, all contributing to the sounds and vocals of the cartoon characters.

Over time, an elaborate back story for the characters was developed that is still ongoing, and most of the artwork, music videos, and other media appearances fit into this narrative in some way. Following those details is not at all important to enjoying the music, but the extras are there for those who wish to dig into them.

The musical blending of sounds, styles, and eras set the stage for other fusion acts that emerged in the years following, but Gorillaz continue to adapt to the latest sounds and production techniques while blazing their own trail into the dense jungle of music all around the world. Each album is different, and 2010's Plastic Beach is their masterpiece, but the debut LP is still the "weirdest" of the bunch and stands out as one of the most unlikely and unique art rock albums to crossover to mainstream success in at least 20 years.

“But I Want It WEIRDER!” With a project like this, it’s surprising to discover there is a fair amount of official and original material outside of the group’s LPs. Since most of the songs selected for the main albums tend to lean toward more vs. less accessible in style, digging into the supplemental material (such as on the G-Sides and D-Sides compilations) adds another level of depth to what Gorillaz are all about, and many of those tracks also get pretty weird. Their many remix collaborations with various DJs and electronic artists is yet another fusion, this one between modern dance sounds and culture and the dance mix fad portions of ‘90s rock.

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Gnarls Barkley-St. Elsewhere
By 2006, all bets were off when it came to what to expect of a new band or project, regardless of the genre or style. The arrival of Gnarls Barkley, and their inescapably brilliant debut single, "Crazy," set another standard for ground-breaking creativity with equal parts of weirdness. This seemingly random pairing of Goodie Mob and solo MC/singer/songwriter, Cee Lo Green, and production whiz/DJ, Danger Mouse, led to the duo's top-tier debut LP, St. Elsewhere, which was created by sending files back and forth via email and ended up becoming one of the most interesting new alternative albums of any kind since its release (in a rare, proper usage of that genre tag).

Building on the Gorillaz musical fusion approach, but with more focus on American than world music, Gnarls Barkley's sound was simultaneously a blend of rock, hip hop, R&B, and EDM while not really being any of them, making it confounding that pop, rock, alternative, and hip hop radio all took notice (a feat shared with Outkast's "Hey Ya!" just a few years prior). "Crazy" was the big hit, but songs like "Smiley Faces," "Just a Thought," and "Who Cares?" best carry the album's themes of loneliness, self-doubt, and heartbreak (usually paired with either relaxing or up-tempo music, not unlike many of TMBG's greatest songs), and Gnarls' cover of The Violent Femmes', "Gone Daddy Gone," is that rare tribute that is at least as good as the original version.

While much of the pop and hip hop of the past 15 years or so has utilized and reflected a variety of influences and styles, Gnarls Barkley's debut (and their nearly-as-good follow up, The Odd Couple) was the last time music this weird was so popular.

“But I Want It WEIRDER!” Unfortunately, Gnarls Barkey’s catalog is pretty small (though it’s all weird to some extent). Adding some visual to the music increases the strangeness, however, both by enjoying the group’s official music videos and checking out some of their creative filmed live performances. (Roskilde ’08 is the best for musicianship and sound quality, but live performances from ’06-’07 generally featured everyone in the band in some sort of themed costume and often performing under a pseudonym.  Odd indeed!)

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The Flaming Lips-Zaireeka
Wrapping up my list of 10 awesomely weird favorite albums, I could not possibly leave out Oklahoma's most famous psychedelic punks, The Flaming Lips! After discovering the band in the early '90s, it took me nearly a decade to really dive into their work, and once I did, I was surprised at the variety and density of the catalog, which stretches back to their self-titled debut EP in 1984 and continues today (meaning they've been around just about as long as Metallica and Red Hot Chili Peppers to name a few). Their sound started as an ode to Butthole Surfers but began to go different directions by the late '80s, later incorporating grunge and eventually EDM and sounding like two or three completely different bands along the way.

While The Flaming Lips' peak stretch of The Soft Bulletin, Yoshimi Battles the Pink Robots, and At War with the Mystics (1999-2006) is arguably their best work, the seeds for those records were planted on 1997's Zaireeka, an 8-song/40 minute LP that is already full of weird music and sounds anyway, but it must be played on 4 separate CD players simultaneously in order to be properly heard! (The band experimented with as many as 100 different cassette tapes being played out of car stereos in a parking garage to whittle down what was needed for such an idea.) With 4 CD players required, and at least two people needed to operate them so that all 4 discs/tracks begin at the exact same time, it forces the listener into a social situation where they probably need to call a friend and have them bring a CD player or two just to listen to the record! (or you can listen to them in different combinations to customize the mix.)

Even with practice and attempted perfection, it's interesting to note that the album never truly sounds the same twice because CD players spin at slightly different speeds (even if they are the same make and model), so songs go from being out of sync, to properly lined up, to out of sync again regardless of the people or machines involved. (For best results, try to restart the sync process at the beginning of each new song.)

If you have the means and know someone with a copy, I promise you Zaireeka will be one of the weirdest music listening experiences you'll ever have (and the rest of the band's gigantic catalog ain't too bad either!!)

“But I Want It WEIRDER!” The Flaming Lips are one of those bands that, because they have been around so long and have released so much material, once you dig into the darker, stranger corners of their catalog, it may be hard to find your way out! Take, for example, an EP entitled, Two Blobs Fucking, which updates the idea of Zaireeka by expecting listeners to play it on 12 separate IPods simultaneously. There is also The Strobo-Trip EP, which contains two “normal” songs book-ending a song that is literally 6 hours long, or the craziest of all, 7 Skies H3, which is one song that lasts for 24 straight hours (which came packaged in a scale replica human skull with melted chrome on the top). The Lips have released music in chocolate human hearts, gummy fetuses, and marijuana-flavored gummy skull heads as well, but you can’t necessarily hear all of that in the music. Well, in a way, I suppose you can.
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