Robots, fax machines, and good manners: Crappy Dracula explains why Almost is the perfect album

Confusing Milwaukee audiences since 2007, goof-punks Crappy Dracula revel in the knowingly obnoxious quirkiness of bands like The Dead Milkmen and fellow locals Couch Flambeau while also solidly pulling off lo-fi, attitude-laced guitar-pop. (A recent 7-inch featuring the band’s own “Hospital Waste Management Facility Party Tonight” and a cover of Guided By Voices’ “A Good Flying Bird” sums up this aesthetic perfectly.) Crappy Dracula get even more bizarre on its debut full-length, Almost, which will be celebrated with a release party Friday at Stonefly. Crappy Dracula’s Dug Belan spoke with The A.V. Club about Almost and why it’s the perfect album, hilariously ugly cover and all.

The A.V. Club: What’s the most bizarre song you’ve written?

Dug Belan: It would have to be a toss-up between “Hospital Waste Management Facility Party Tonight,” which is about partying in a hospital landfill, and maybe “Boats, Boats, Boats and More Boats,” which is from the perspective of a tired boat salesman. No topic is taboo for us. We’ll go anywhere.

AVC: Do you guys intentionally write silly songs, or can you just not help yourselves?

DB: Silly is a nice way of putting it. It’s intentionally stupid, but it’s what makes us crack up. If other people get it, that’s awesome. We’ve met a few, and if you don’t get it, maybe you can just be confused by it, and that’s okay, too. At shows if somebody is going to leave, they’re going to leave right away. Then there’s a few confused, half-smiling people in the back, trying to figure out what’s going on. Then there’ll be people dancing, and enjoying it and maybe laughing, which is awesome.

We like to switch up the set-list a lot. Usually we’ll have a theme of jokes that we’ll be working on, or a banner. For this show, we’ve written up some rules for the crowd to follow. We’ll have a big poster for that—“No Laughing,” “Shirts Vs. Skins,” “First Team to 12 With a Two-Point Advantage Wins.” I thought it would be funny.

Almost. Almost what?

DB: We’re pulled in two directions because we’re egomaniacs, but we also realize that we’re kind of pieces of shit, and not a lot of people get it, so it’s like, well, this is what we got! It’s almost a record. In my opinion, it’s the perfect record; we have robots talking, fax machines, people booing, horns, and good manners. If somebody were describing the album to me, I’d go buy it.

AVC: The cover photo of Almost was a recent topic conversation on a radio show in Los Angeles. How did it come up?

DB: There’s a lot going on on our album cover and they were just baffled. Like, “Why is there a can of hydrogen peroxide with a straw in it? Nobody drinks hydrogen peroxide. Why does that bear have a wig on and a fake dick coming out of it?” Honest questions, but we have no answers. It just kind of happened that way. Justin [Kern, the band’s guitarist] had this vague idea of two transvestites on a dirty couch, looking uncomfortable, and that’s what happened. The Saturday Night Fever and Winchester Cathedral album covers were in background, which is what the station was interested in, but apparently, it would fall within fair use because they take up less than 10 percent of the total album cover and they’re not immediately recognizable as what they are. They said we should be okay, and with the limited press run we have, probably no one important is ever going to see it.