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Whirlwind Heat’s ‘I Fucked Up Types Of Wood’ is a parody of their own third album ‘Types Of Wood’. Each of the tracks is a ‘fucked up’ version of the original using various instruments and noises. Ingenuous? No. Why? It doesn’t work. Take ‘I Fucked Up Air Miami’ which kicks things off with an acoustic guitar and a kazoo then incorporates yelps, claps, shouting and the sounds of a ping-pong game. Rather than sound different or even amusing the song lacks depth and sounds awful.
‘I Fucked Up Reagan’ sounds the same- flat and dull, in ‘I Fucked Up Gene Pool Style’ where there are tinges of blues riffs from the acoustic guitar there is a glimmer of hope for something decent, but this is soon killed off by the lifeless vocals and atrocious lyrics about sperm banks; “Could spread my seed and grow a tree/Successful fertilisation will be achieved” says it all really. This goes on and on throughout the rest of the album… rather like a bunch of doped up kids have got hold of a tape recorder and are sitting in their basement desperately (in all sense of the word) trying to make a really ‘funny’ recording.
Although Whirlwind Heat try and add more depth to ‘I Fucked Up Umbrella People’, ‘I Fucked Up French’ and ‘I Fucked Up Nylon Heat’; the only three numbers out of eleven that actually resemble anything musical, it still doesn’t work. What is lacking here is not only any rhythm or beat to hold the songs together, but lyrical and musical substance also. There’s absolutely nothing to connect the band to their listeners in the words or even the style of the music, so anyone who isn’t a massive hardcore Whirlwind Heat fan or hasn’t heard the original recordings to compare this to, ‘I Fucked Up Types Of Wood’ is so awful they would just write it off.
Perhaps Whirlwind Heat are trying to be too cool and different with their own material, but in doing so and not taking themselves seriously how can they expect anyone else to with an album that sounds like they’ve no idea how to make music? If anything this album is a band ‘in joke’ that’s been released.
