2005 release on Plan-it-X Records

Sputnick Music Review:

What an odd name that is, Spoonboy; where did that come from?

It doesn’t matter, really. Straight from Plan-It-X records comes an album that’s under-produced, musically straight-forward, and vocally dreadful; however, on the other side of the sun, this album is brilliant. 

You know Plan-It-X, right? Records for cheap - think early Against Me!, Defiance, Ohio, and This Bike Is A Pipe Bomb. Although, this record sounds nothing like any of those, but is clearly influenced by that DIY ethic. 

Spoonboy bashes television (“TV told me, lose my virginity, hop to the beat boy, you’re almost sixteen, take with you always a flare for the dramatic, don’t kiss boys it makes you a faggot”), critics of younger generations (“You may well put me in prison but you’ll never touch my heart”), and society in general (“Your laws mean *** to me, they’re just arbitrary guidelines of absolute missed ideology”). The best part is, though, that this never gets preachy, maybe due to the albums extremely short play time; although, at around 25 minutes, it’s no shorter than the average NOFX album and those seem to hold more than their fair share of preaching. 

Maybe it’s that Spoonboy never takes himself out of the equation, always a player in the tragic comedy:

“Philadelphia
Is a city on the
middle eastern side of
A landmass on this planet
That I'm not too proud of
but it's a landmass that I live on
and Philadelphia's smoggy skyline
lies above a few good humans
Who are not impressed.” 

So he’s unhappy, yes; but he also still lives here. Not proud of the smoggy skylines, but still a contributor. The stand-out track from this record has to be the brilliantly crafted “My Generation,” in which Spoonboy offers us a bit of hope (“We still know we believe when it comes pouring out our hearts”) and refreshingly, a bit of irony (“They say that kids my age think they’re invincible and that seems foolish but I still know I’ll never die”). 
The voice, though, oh lord that voice. This record is not for everybody, it’s catchy as all-get out but without an open mind, most will turn it off in the first few minutes; I urge you, though, stick with it, it’s a grower. Spoonboy plays the role of the teenager who just wants to do something right, a contrast to Holden Caulfield, playing to the same demographic with a different approach. Where Holden is angsty and sick of the “phonies,” Spoonboy is optimistic and heartfelt – trying to scrape through by doing not only what’s right but also what may make others happy, while still staying true to himself. 

This record is great, but not because of the instrumentation (which is average at best, although the jumpy, spastic guitar parts do fit wonderfully), and not because of the vocals – because this record represents for teenagers today everything that Holden Caulfield represented 50 years ago (and to a great extent today as well), a champion of our generation, waving the flag of teenage misunderstanding, awkwardness, and the desire to fit in, while still forming the right identity. This record is not for everyone, but those that it speaks to will treasure it for years.

The Restaurant

California

Ghost Overseas

Always Leaving

Intro

Stab Yer Dad

Gerald Lee Palmer

Sexy Dreams

The Mamas And The Papas

I Am A Dog

2011 LP by Spoonboy
on Plan-it-X Records, Shout Out Loud Prints, Fuck You is a Seven Letter Word Records

Review from Razorcake:

"I’m driving in my car, you turn on the radio/I’m pulling you close, you just say no/You say you don’t like it, but, girl, I know you’re a liar/’Cause when we kiss…fire.” These are lyrics to “Fire,” a song by Bruce Springsteen-champion and voice of the American people-a song in which the narrator sings about sexually assaulting his girlfriend. The creepiest part of this is that the tone of the song is warm and touching. What’s even more disturbing is the character is supposed to be sympathetic. Springsteen, who’s always stood up for the people, really drops the ball here when it comes down to the simplest of women’s rights: consent. I wonder how many times I’d heard this song before I’d even kissed a girl. Talk about bad examples. It was a little before my time, so I wonder if this caused a stir at all. Or was it just the zeitgeist? 

This is Americana and this is the Americana that Spoonboy boldly confronts in his multimedia (zine and album) project: The Papas. The Papas is literally themed around Americana, the stories and culture of a country. But it goes deeper than the swinging dick strugglers and emasculated sad sacks of Bruce Springsteen songs. It looks at those who were even further oppressed because they didn’t fit into the gender binary hegemony. It attacks the patriarchal core of our society, by fighting the idea of that rugged individualistic male hero… and, thus, male supremacy. 

But it’s his linking it to our American heritage-Americana-that makes this such a crucial work. This machismo hurts everyone, even-and often especially-those who project it the most. Spoonboy’s argument seems to be that American society is based around the oppression of women, queers, and anybody who doesn’t fall into the “alpha male” category. This, in turn, leads to the oppression of everyone. 

There is nothing warm and fuzzy about Spoonboy’s Americana and the songs on the album tell stories of people who are wounded by it, went down fighting it, and continue to resist it. It’s about people who fall outside of the gender norms, the rejected and fallen-out unamericans. It shows the fallout and damage inflicted on people who don’t fit into it, while still continuing to encourage that fight. In the zine, he reprints articles by radical writers like bell hooks, as well as art, some of his own writing and lyrics, representing an underground that resists. 

Raymond Carver once said, “All his life my father wanted to be bold.” He was talking about the damage the struggle had done to his father, the birthright of male privilege, and how it came up short for him. The male hegemony rewards no one, except for, maybe, the wealthy at the top who were born into it and, yet, somehow believe they’re self-made men. It’s a humbling work that attacks the entire system of patriarchy, demanding everyone take account of how they play into it, and encouraging them to resist it. 

This is a courageous and defiant work that should be listened to by everyone. 

(My copy of The Papas zine came with a tape, which was separated from it. However, Spoonboy’s The Papas, as an album, can be downloaded free at: http://spoonboy.bandcamp.com. It’s a whole package, though. I would recommend seeking out the zine with the album.) 

-Craven Rock 

I am a Dog (acoustic)

Mold In My Lungs

In The Attic

High Maintenance Friends

Linus and Me

The Harder They Come (Jimmy Cliff)

Free Yer Mind, Square

The Dispossessed

this operation: watch out as i make a mess of it,
all stuck like tarpits up in my head. 
this dull perdition: i am motivated by the hell of it,
or stuck in my tracks, it just depends. 

this precious lifetime: runs opposite to eternity.
infinite timelines rush by and pass.
insist now that i'm... i'm obsessed and so aware of it,
fixated on things that i can't have. 
but jealousy is a boring, boring game
and i do much better with crazy, crazy, crazy. 

i wanna be your cast iron obligation. 
i wanna be the poetry you dream. 
i wanna breathe your pressure to succeed. 
i wanna be your court ordered sense of failure.
i wanna taste the aftertaste of shame. 
i wanna be your day stuck in the rain. 
i wanna be your court ordered acquisition. 
i wanna be the thing that you achieve. 
i wanna be your reminder to breathe.
i wanna be your cast iron sense of sadness.
i wanna be half real, half make believe.
i wanna be self consciously incomplete.

One Handed

dr. irving kirsch has got a study out, you see,
about the chemical imbalance of the brain, 
the controversy centers around the source and cure 
for that old thing they call depression 
i read the article in silence while my mother takes her medicine. 
sitting here alone i'm thinking about how things have been, 
about the emptiness i feel sometimes, 
i'll flirt with it, i'll treat it like a muse, 
put it to work, but then i won't know where it's gone. 
it's overshadowed by some thing that's come along…

like attention from this one cute girl. 
from a couple hundred miles up the road. 
i ask her what she thinks, she says "in truth, well i don't know.
these things come and go.”

and when all this introspection gets me feeling too unstable, 
take my bike out for a ride, 
i'll have a drink and see the monuments 
to all those overrated men from our tired history, 
yeah for some reason it means something to me. 

i'd take this car some thousand miles. 
if i sublet my room i might not worry about money for a while. 
if that sounds good to you, well you could come along, 
but either way i'm headed on…

Dr. Irving Kirsch

in the humble gaze of a queer adolescence
you find that everything’s placed to be questioned
through the haze of your foggy eyes.
in one 15 year old’s survey of the chemical cures and the therapy,
the clouds overhead don’t quite clear away,
but that’s what they’ll say.

so the state comes to investigate
the family at the wrong estate,
the dad who choses not to temper his child’s minds with drugs,
while abusive dads and alcoholics
cheer on their rapist football sons
i am feeling empty, all used up and overdue.
and all my self important pain,
it drips and runs and it fades away,
all shadowed by the expanses of the meaningless.

in the humble gaze of a queer adolescence
i fixate on all our own planned obsolescence 
til it derails my train of thought,
and all in all i guess it’s ok.
i mean, words never carried much truth anyway,
and i couldn’t claim to know what to say, so i let it lay.

Hazy

"a poor man's belle and sebastian" - maximum rocknroll

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