This is a priority listen for living in America in the 21st century. Not that it's the greatest album ever, but it's definitely not the worst. And how many albums can you say that for? The real answer: a lot of people will think this is the worst album they've ever heard. Actually, they'll believe it's the worst album they've ever heard. If a roomful of fundamentalist Christians told me they'd sit and listen to only one album of my choosing, I'd probably demand Pregnant Babies. I think it's even telling that I never imagined such a what-if scenario until Fat Worm of Error came along.
Their earlier release on Yeay! Cassettes ”” nzznzzzznnznznnn ”” was basically a mix tape of all the coolest skronk sounds they could find interrupted by blasts of helium vocals and Beefheartian underwater tests. But compared to that scrawled-into-the-chest-wtf, Pregnant Babies is the epic of birth within birth within birth within birth that the title suggests. Horns, drum machines, pots and pans, pre-pubescent post-virginity screeches, are-those-guitars?, and Rhode Island shrapnel abound. Like eating chaos. Challenge yourself and buy this album. Bless Load for releasing what may be the weirdest record they've ever put out. (Yeah, I realize it's the home of everything that was the weirdest before them.) Pregnant Babies is like playing tic-tac-toe but using scurrying cartoon cockroaches as Xs, Os, and even the lines. Oh, and some of them are real cockroaches, so it's kind of gross and unsettling, even though it's so much wacky fun. And you're totally sober, because sober is definitely the new fucked-up.
1. Special Bonus Thing
2. Let's Fool the Meat to the Hassle Room
3. Cicadas
4. La Mortdans la Ville du Bois Verte
5. Special Bonus Thing (reprise)
6. Red Melting Plastic Box
7. Laissez-Faire is for the Birds
8. Stretch
9. Brown
10. 20' x 20'
11. Petulant Bureaucrats Pummeled with Peanut Butter
12. Hand of God
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