Peeping Tom
Label: Ipecac
Length: LP
Media: CD
Format: Album
WorkNameSort: Peeping Tom
Leave it to Mike Patton to set out to make a ‘popâ?� record with a raft of abstract electronicists (Amon Tobin, Odd Nosdam, Dub Trio), fractured hip-hoppers (Dan the Automator, Kool Keith, Jel) and Starbucks superstars (Norah Jones, Bebel Gilberto, Massive Attack) and wind up with a disc that not only sounds nothing like the sum of its parts, but also winds up dropping a Britney Spears lyric like it’s perfectly OK. This isn’t the sort of post-irony piss-take that Ipecac followers may have expected from ‘the Mike Patton pop albumâ?�; the deeply disturbed former alt-rock star may still be doing penance for the fish video in many of his other endeavors, but despite his penchant for the super-bizarre, Patton’s appreciation for a groove and a tune are deeply ingrained. If anyone can figure out how to spit out a soaring, bouncy melody that (I think) references Will & Grace and fuse it with a grinding Kid Koala beat, it’s definitely Patton. Unsurprisingly, Peeping Tom sounds less like a winking experiment and more like a willful envelope-pushing; the beats are as solid as they are unpredictable, while every single one of the songs gleefully revels in a forthright, contemporary accessibility that’s tempered with an unavoidable sense that something sinister (or at least sordid) is going on somewhere in the track. Of note: This may be the only album you buy this week that has Norah Jones breathily rap-singing lyrics like, ‘The truth kinda hurts, don’t it, motherfucker.â?�
This article appears in May 24-30, 2006.