The Machine

Some concept albums have a way of turning people off to the music by enshrouding it in convoluted mythology that means more to the artist trying to convey complicated feelings in an abstract way than anyone else. Mastodon dealing with the tragic suicide of drummer Brann Dailor’s sister through an overly complex narrative involving space-traveling paraplegics, wormholes, and Rasputin on 2009’s excellent Crack The Skye serves as a good example. Although the personal hardships are nowhere near as painful as the death of a loved one, Fambly Fun! has had its fair share of misfortune lately that could have soured its mood and sucked the fun out of its music. Instead, the band’s new, ridiculously fun, “hip-hopra” concept album, The Machine, serves as a love letter to kitschy ’80s and ’90s iconography like robots, unicorns, and NBA superstars to which just about anyone can relate.

Fambly Fun! employs an intriguing pastiche of 8-bit beats, psych-rock squiggles, aggressive rhymes, and distorted choruses—as well as pitch-perfect narration from The Rooster, voiced by living Madison legend Art Paul Schlosser—to tell a tale of world domination. The Machine, a giant robotic unicorn—frenetically voiced by La Crosse MC Hyphon—and a laser-footed octopus battle with the fate of the townspeople hanging in the balance, against a backdrop that’s easily imagined as a Mega Man-style cityscape. Kicking off with a slowly dissolving beat—instantly recognizable to anyone familiar with Toni Basil’s “Mickey”—“Rising Up” sets the cartoonishly sinister tone taken by the rest of the album, a mood that’s mined most effectively by the middle section of “Code” and “Octopus Laserfeet.”

The original concept—a soundtrack to a hypothetical sequel to Space Jam—surfaces during the superfluous (but nonetheless enjoyable) last two tracks of the album, “(Basket) Balls” and “Jordan.” But the beef of The Machine, from the moment the robot unicorn rises from the earth to The Rooster’s echoing cries of “Michael Jordan is awesome,” side scrolls along like an unusually deep and strange video game, maximizes the fun throughout, and easily wins over anyone from the original Nintendo generation.

The Machine is available on Fambly Fun!’s Bandcamp.

See Fambly Fun! August 11 at The Frequency.