Custom - Fast

This is the first of a three part mega entry. Y'see I bought this album without cover art. For some reason I confused Custom with Cooter and bought a new copy for the cover art...but then it was Cooter instead of Custom. Except that the band Whose album I bought was involved in a long legal dispute with another band named Cooter, a suit that they lost. So now they are called "Autopilot Off." Got it? Well I'm going to review an album by each band, but it stated here and I really cant get to the other two without getting a long list of thoughts about this band off my chest. 

Genre: Kind of a borderline late 90s singer songwriter/Numetal/Alternative. It is a single man outfit, namely one Duane Lavold, a Canadian who started out with a bio pic of the lead singer of INXS which was shelved upon the latter's suicide. He fled to New York and set himself up as a member of an artist collective in the mid 90s, pursuing a career in music. He seems to have imbibed every pop influence of the time, and the decade previous. Again, this seems to be a gift of the Canadians. He has the perceptive lyrics and melodic sensitivity of singer songwriter alternative, which will break down, at least once per song, into heavy anthemic Numetal sludge. The occasional rap or DJ scratching is thrown in just to remind you that, though the album was released in 2002, for some people the late 90s will never die. What a horrible thought. 

Much like the rest of his music, the lyrics are an odd blend of Alt and Numetal. At times very clever and insightful in its perception of human nature, it is often simultaneously terrifying in its lack of self awareness and broishness. A great example is "Morning Spank," a song full of funny moments and clever songwriting but ultimately a rather sexist "bros before hos" song.  

The oddest thing about this duality is that he affects a very skaterpunk attitude, which really is not existent at all in the music beyond his oddly California vocal delivery and attitude. The goes so far as to result in a regular name dropping of LA, even though he lived in Manhattan. 

Where would I have heard of it: Custom was the center of a controversy when the self directed video for the break-through single "Hey Mister" was banned by MTV's standards and practices. This was a sad moment, both for Custom and for MTV. This song was big and growing, and would have made the top ten. Without that last push from the then-still-relevant TRL crowd the single, and his career, stalled. 

MTV, on the other hand, showed the world what it had become: no longer the subversive force of youth rebellion, willing to sponsor a drawn out fight on the floor of congress with Tipper Gore, MTV had become a peddler of safe, intellectually bankrupt pedantry. That is, it was that way on  the one show that they still ran that had anything to do with music. Custom was hardly an intellectual powerhouse, and the video was intentionally offensive, but it is for a song about a dude sleeping with your daughter. And it is a good song, the type of thing that would have brought some energy and controversy back to the network. If the song had come out five years before MTV would have played it, and the controversy would have fueled their relevance. They did not, and despite increasingly shrill protests that youth is no longer interested in music culture, it becomes more obvious every year that the youth are also no longer interested in MTV. 

Anything of note: I think it is worth noting that this album was recorded in a studio this guy built with his dad. in Manhattan. I think that really fits a final piece into this puzzle. Duane Lavold is an intelligent and talented guy who is taken with American pop culture and desperate to get his bite of fame. His parents fund his dream, through multiple failures, and he is good enough to almost make it. Very nearly. 

Is it any good: The album is a mix of things he is honestly enthusiastic about, while also being a designed product, intended to sell well. Any specificity is replaced by a generalized, generic anger. This is the Numetal part, the part that is intentionally shocking just to show them, just to get their attention. Despite this a valuable energy and personality come through. There is humor and really some clever songwriting. This is what pop music is supposed to be: a commercial product that its makers actually believe in. Sure it has problems and rough edges, and god it is pretty sexist. But it is really good, somehow. Which is a real shame.