Salt in Wound

4 stars out of 5

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Last summer, when I did a 4th-of-July-themed episode of my wildly unpopular internet-radio show, my buddy Dave asked if I’d play “In the USA” from Life in a Blender’s 1988 debut album. Now hold on a cotton-picking second: Sure, Dave’s a buddy, but A) we didn’t grow up together; he graduated college three years before me, and B) he lives all the way out in California, and C) he’s not allowed to know about Life in a Blender! That’s my dirty little secret!

In the mid-’90s, my wonderful friend Sarah (for those making a flowchart, she graduated one year after me, and lives in Massachusetts) took me to a New York bar called McGovern’s, because she is a problem drinker. But also because her coworker Don’s band was playing there. And that band was Black 47. OK, no, it was Life in a Blender. I was immediately taken by their wit, off-kilter tunefulness, and overall joie de vivre except McGovern’s was the sort of place where if you said “joie de vivre” too loud you might get punched in the face. And Al Houghton was the guitarist and I’d seen his name on They Might Be Giants records so I quickly knew, ooh, these weren’t just some clowns in the back of a dingy bar, this was a real band!

I have followed Life in a Blender, from a safe distance, ever since. There’s a song on their new release entitled “Frankenstein Cannot Be Stopped,” but it’s the band that is truly unstoppable.

And this new album—wait, is it an album? Or a mini-album? We Already Have Birds That Sing is bigger than an EP, smaller than a box set. Seven songs clocking in at 24 total minutes. (Cruel Optimist by Worriers is still the shortest album I’ve purchased this year: 8 songs in 19 minutes. Rock and roll, baby!)

But hey, who cares how long the album is when everything you could possibly want is packed into the opening song, the would-be title track “Tongue-Cut Sparrow.” A blast of brass welcomes us, quickly followed by vocalist/lyricist Don Rauf sounding like Tom Waits’ kid brother. We also get call-and-response vocals, an angelic bridge, an old-timey megaphone, and those horns keep swinging. And what’s that, an organ fill? This is almost too musical!

“Falmouth” has a much lighter, breezier feel. It’s as if the band took the same ingredients—horns, call-and-response, that trusty megaphone—and placed them in some sort of kitchen mixing appliance, creating something entirely new. Rauf croons much more innocently and Rebecca Weiner Tompkins’ lovely violin sits in the front seat for this summer trip to the Cape.

All of a sudden, summer’s done and it’s midnight on Halloween. The aforementioned “Frankenstein…”, a fairly straightforward tale of watching the Frankenstein movie, is rendered spooky by Dave Moody’s moody cello, Ken Meyer’s martial drumming, and a tick-tock chiming guitar, before the band really stretches out in the song’s final minute.

With its chicka-chicka rhythm guitar and bursts of horns, “Shards” starts out sounding like a cover of the Jackson 5’s “I Want You Back.” It soon mutates into Blender’s own brand of twisted funk, anchored by Mark Lerner’s bottomless bass.

“Mamanama” may the catchiest thing here—a revved-up country/western stomper with an ear-worm nonsense-word chorus. It’s “Last Train to Clarksville” and the Muppets’ “Mahna Mahna” on amphetamines at the Grand Old Opry.

Tompkins and Moody trick us into thinking “Good Answer” is going to be pretty, but Meyer’s pounding beat braces us for Rauf’s litany of political-and-pop-culture buzzwords. While he indicts modern society, a Greek game-show chorus shout-intones “Good answer!” Freedom from choice is what you want, as a wise man once said.

The band sails into the sunset with the jaunty pop of “To Sea in a Sieve.” Just like the album as a whole, it’s over before you know it but leaves you smiling. (Hey now!) The veteran band shows off all its varied strengths on this record and is absolutely firing on all cylinders. We may already have birds that sing, but Life in a Blender invites you to sing along and shake your groove thing. (Indeed, separate songs mention “watch her wiggle,” “bust a move,” and “bump and grind.”) Come on now, join in the fun, and don’t be shy: “Leave the tuner in the galley,” Rauf says on that nautical final track. “I’d rather just sing off-key.”