Lazyboy is a project of producers
Johnny Douglas and
Søren Rasted, the latter best known as a founding member of the Euro-dance combo
Aqua. For
Lazyboy TV, the duo layers the work of singers, voice-over artists, and other contributors over a bed of soft electronic programming and sampled instrumentation. Appropriately for an album with a song called "We Only Read the Headlines,"
Lazyboy is like humanism set on burst mode. It surveys culture through a series of statements, observations, and pointed questions ("Do you consider yourself ready for life?") pulled from pop culture and arranged to reflect peoples' universal need for life, love, and happiness. A blur of voices speak in the verses -- male, female, foreign, young, old, gay, and straight. Unified by rousing, diva-style choruses, their words become a patchwork of the human experience at the beginning of the 21st century. "Facts of Life" recites a litany of facts and averages ("Eskimos use refrigerators to keep food from freezing/41 percent of all people take people with curly hair less seriously"); the male and female narrators of "Man Woman (Yin-Yang)" fight their catch phrase-based battle of the sexes over upbeat Euro-house complete with a vocoder chorus; and "Desiderata" is an update of the 1971 Les Crane inspirational spoken word hit, this time around voiced by British actor Christopher Fairbanks. Yes,
Lazyboy TV is all about the love. In fact, its final track is called "It's All About the Love" and features people from all walks of life talking about what love really means. There's also a cut explaining in no uncertain terms the method for preparing a marijuana cigarette, as well as the Internet download hit "Underwear Goes Inside the Pants," which features the acerbically funny social criticism of stand-up comic Greg Giraldo. ~ Johnny Loftus