Lazyboy

LAZYBOY
"LAZYBOY TV"
(Universal, 2004)


"We Only Read The Headlines"


I know I mentioned this album briefly before (in the same post with another "genre-bending" artist from Denmark, their common nationality something I didn't even realize until after I'd written that post), but it's been awhile, and as I said about that other artist, this one also deserves its own post, complete with a song sample. (Besides, the artist name is kind-of appropriate ... seeing as how I'm too much of a "lazy boy" to post something completely fresh right now.)

The Danish techno-pop outfit calling themselves Lazyboy basically made all of human culture the subject of its debut album, a collection of chill beats underneath a series of voiced-over trivia tidbits, statistics, and other nuggets of information. Sometimes enlightening, sometimes ironic, sometimes humorous, and always entertaining, the spoken-word snippets are grouped into different tracks by their varying subject matter.

"Facts Of Life" and "We Only Read The Headlines" provide a string of miscellaneous factoids about pop culture and human behavior; "Are You Qualified?" examines our struggle between conformity and individuality; "Man Woman (Yin & Yang)" has the opposing sexes taking jabs at each other's idiosyncrasies; "This Is The Truth" offers philosophical observations for the listener to think about; and "It's All About Love" and "Inhale Positivity" lighten the mood with a feel-good vibe.

This is another of those albums that I can't imagine anyone not liking. And to top it off, the U.S. edition even comes with a companion DVD containing the videos of four of the album's tracks. Such a package at such a low price really makes it worth picking up. In "Inhale Positivity", Patric Allen urges listeners to "go buy a CD with music that you wouldn't normally have bought". Sounds like good advice to me.

Whose Genre Is It, Anyway?

One thing I love about music nowadays is how the genres are starting to blur together more and more as time goes on. Pop, rock, country, blues, soul, jazz, R&B and hip-hop have always overlapped a little bit, but it seems to be happening more now than ever before. It's probably a symbiotic thing: as artists become more experimental and all-encompassing with the music they create, we listeners begin to appreciate a wider variety of genres ... and those of us listeners who also make our own music push the creative envelope even further as a result, broadening the palates of the next generation of listeners.

There have always been artists who've had crossover success, from Elvis Presley (famous not just in the rock world, but had a big country following and was even known for gospel singing), to the historic collaboration between Aerosmith and Run-DMC ("Walk This Way", the first successful rock-rap hybrid song), which probably led in part to the whole "nu-metal" genre. Now we have the hip-hop/R&B/pop mashup Gnarls Barkley, and many other artists who simply don't fit neatly into one particular genre of music.

I've become wary of most genre labels in recent years, because it's impossible to do any artist justice by calling them "pop" or "rock" or anything in particular ... which brings me to the two artists I'm highlighting in this post. I won't even attempt to classify these albums in any particular genre, because it can't be done ... which means they'd probably appeal to a fairly large percentage of listeners. That's probably another reason that "genre-benders", as I call them, are increasing in number: a wider target audience means a greater chance for success ... not that either of these artists was consciously using that strategy.

Bent Fabric -- Bent Fabricius-Bjerre is a Danish pianist in his eighties, who scored a big hit decades ago with a charming piano-powered tune called "Alley Cat" (you'd recognize it if you heard it). Now, he's gotten some help turbo-charging his music for a new generation on the fantastic, and appropriately-titled, album "Jukebox". There are a few instrumental piano-based tracks here, but also plenty of actual songs, featuring several different guest vocalists. Whether you're looking for jazz, hip-hop, soul, pop, or all of the above, you'll find it here.

Lazyboy -- You know those "miscellaneous factoids" and "amusing sayings" emails that are perpetually floating around the internet? Well, imagine the better of those being recited over laid-back "chill-out" beats and instrumentals, and you have a general idea of what Lazyboy sounds like on their album "Lazyboy TV". The most popular single from this album is different from all the rest: the sharp-witted comedy of Greg Giraldo narrating a social-commentary track called "Underwear Goes Inside The Pants". There are also some "feel-good" numbers like "Inhale Positivity" and "It's All About Love..." (the titles speak for themselves), as well as Lazyboy's take on the classic poem "Desiderata", which fits right in. Predictable? Maybe ... but for some reason I really, really like this album.