Ruby Vroom

Edit: (89 -> 94) Yep I get it now, this has got to be one of the weirdly catchiest albums of all time, and I love almost every second of it.

God, you know before listening to "Soul Coughing" out of sheere curiosity due to the funny genre tags and odd cover - after finding it on one of my characteristic deep dives into this wretched website - I figured that whatever I was about to hear was gonna be eccentric and bizarre, but HOLY CRAP I wasn't prepared.

This feels like a truly, ONE-OF-A-KIND ALBUM.

While not predating Beck by any means (Mellow Gold came out earlier the same year) and not acting as a direct parallel, "Ruby Vroom" definitely seems to embody his "why the hell not?" slacker attitude that was eventually perfected on Odelay a few years later, managing to transcend genre tags or predefined labels in the process. Production is overall jazzy, with killer basslines consistently afoot alongside a wealth of rotating instruments that keep you on your toes at all times - horns, pianos, noisy bass parts, and what seems to be the occasional odd vocal sample prop up every now and then, coming and going from track to track. And the vocals definitely fit the slacker attitude bill, especially with the off-kilter, somewhat whiny delivery that belts out SOME OF THE WEIRDEST AND NON SEQUITUR LYRICS OF ALL TIME, seriously no joke there are multiple SCHOOLHOUSE ROCK references randomly sprinkled around??? (or at least parts where he just counts 5, 10, 15, 20) and it feels like he's tacking on more and more details to ever-increasingly winding stories of questionable importance. Lots of zoom, zip, bow, bip onomatopoeia bits too, all I'll say there is he literally predicts the krabby patty reveal at the end of "Supra Genius" and it's amazing, trust me.

Idk what to think of this thing tbh, it's pretty kickass and I can see it growing beyond my current rating in the future, considering my love for "simultaneously every genre at once" kinda things, I just need more listens with it to be completely sure. But at least check it out for the lyrical gems, like when he rhymes 'Spaghetti' with 'Machete' on "Down to This", and just the entirety of "Is Chicago, Is Not Chicago" just naming like every world capital, which is pretty funny. Now that I mention it, considering the whole counting thing early on in the record, and the random capitals being named here, it's now confirmed in my suspiciously tinfoil-shaped headcannon that this record started off as an educational program that got COMPLETELY OUT OF HAND, but remember that's just a theory, a GAME THEORY, thanks for watchibng like and subscribblwe