The Bran Flakes sum up all that's good and bad about the indie music scene. Their lo-fi approach to recording is consciously arty, with a lack of slickness and pretension that makes it endearing, when it isn't slightly annoying. The duo that put this album together --
Mildred Pitt and
Otis Fodder -- have been at it for a while. Almost all of the sounds on
I Have Hands are samples from various obscure and not-so-obscure CDs and LPs, including instructional records, marching band albums, country records, sound effects records, kids' records, and pop, rock, and dance music albums of all kinds. As you flip between the album's 30 tracks -- it's hard to listen to all this in one sitting -- various notes and melodies, some familiar and some just plain odd, jump out at you: singing dogs bark out "Jingle Bells" along with bits of
Lawrence Welk,
Mr. Rogers, and
Van Halen. The only track that comes close to an actual song is "Stumble out of Bed," which is built around a sample of
Dolly Parton's hit "9 to 5." It's overlaid with the guitar hook from
Survivor's "Eye of the Tiger" and a snippet of an old
Osmonds' record. It's clever and a bit irritating, as is the whole album. The "song" doesn't neatly fit into any single category, but it's not exactly breaking new ground, either. The production expertise is impressive, but leaves you scratching your head wondering just what the heck they were trying to accomplish. It's also a good thing they're on a small label, because the avalanche of samples that makes up this "music" is just begging for a copyright lawsuit should one of the tracks actually get any significant airplay and become a hit.