Have you ever wondered what it would sound like if Eddie Van Halen grew up on punk rock, and finally decided to handle
Van Halen's vocal chores himself? The weirded-out group
The(e) Speaking Canaries thinks it's a wonderful idea to morph Eddie's heavy metal guitar heroics with the classic guitar gear that
Dinosaur Jr.'s J. Mascis insists on using. And it's a good thing they conducted this experiment, because the finished result is a new and totally fresh approach to alternative rock. Instead of re-writing
Van Halen songs like all of those bad hair-metal bands from the 1980s tried to do,
The(e) Speaking Canaries incorporate actual
V.H. songs into their own spaced-out originals (with many stretching far beyond the five-minute mark). For example, the near 10-minute long "Hall of Force/Gone Bad/So Glad/Reprise" combines a stomping
Speaking Canaries composition with a perfect, note-for-note rendition of
V.H.'s overlooked classic "Girl Gone Bad" (ever the perfectionists, they even insert a cover of
Cream's "I'm So Glad" at the end, just as
Van Halen did on their last two tours with
David Lee Roth). Other standout tracks are the parading opener, "Houses and Houses of Perfectness," and the pretty "Guitar Strings for a Holocaust." If you never got into alternative music because you felt the "technicality" of the players wasn't up to snuff, chances are
The(e) Speaking Canaries will finally convert you. [Note: the group later re-recorded this double album and issued it under the same title, but as a "lo-fi" edition (on Mind Cure Records).] ~ Greg Prato