Graham Smith, who records under the name Kleenex Girl Wonder, has always played around with the egocentric implications of solo recording, titling an early recording "Graham Smith is the Coolest Man Alive" (as well as a later song substituting "strongest") and, in the notes to this new double-CD set, claiming - tongue in cheek, or not - that this album "can move beyond the traditional limitations of music."

On the basis of this album, it's no longer so clear Smith is only playing around with egocentricity. When the jukebox jury gets around to ruling on bedroom recordists, this album will be Exhibit A for the prosecution: Smith most definitely needs an editor. What we have here are two CDs, more than eighty minutes long, only half of which comprise objects that might be denoted as songs. The rest is a rambling, incoherent, half-assed, and poorly acted story, something about an FBI supercomputer program and artificial intelligence. Smith seems to have imagined that this story would be compelling enough to listen to repeatedly, while I listened to it in its entirety only out of a sense of critical duty. (He does throw in a great, self-deprecating line about Guided by Voices, however.) Interlaced within the story are about forty minutes of songs which, true to the theme of the CD, incorporate more electronics than past Kleenex Girl Wonder songs.

And those songs are what make this album so very frustrating: Smith has an unearthly knack for throwing together instantly appealing Who-into-Cheap Trick, short, snapping, crackling pop songs, and the verbal and background noise glop that surrounds them here only diminishes their impact. Programming my CD player to hear only the songs, their strengths shine more clearly - although none of them are quite as good as most of Kleenex Girl Wonder's previous release Ponyoak. Smith does, though, still come up with some of the best titles in the business: "Withholding Hands," "Reuniting Airlines," "Hard World Flooring," and, uh, "That Nature Is a Heraclitean Fire and of the Comfort of the Resurrection."

Not that I have any business telling Smith what to do, but for me this CD fails because CDs are the kind of object people listen to over and over again, and therefore listeners expect that details will be revealed upon repeated, closer listening and will be layered simultaneously rather than sequentially. Smith seems to revert here to a sense of time and sound experience more appropriate before mechanical reproduction-an irony in light of his subject matter that, smart guy that he is, he may even be aware of. But holding listeners' interest through sound alone takes a different set of skills from songwriting-and Smith hasn't developed those skills. Even if Smith had crafted a compelling narrative, well written and credibly acted and sound-directed in the manner of radio serials, I think I'd feel the same way: it's just not what I listen to CDs for. Granted, in the notes Smith seems aware that he's asking listeners to approach this album differently-but does he offer on this recording any compelling reason for me to shift my listening paradigm? Nope, 'fraid not.

March 17, 2001
Jeff Norman