#76: A sorcerer who can also rock
#76: A sorcerer who can also rock
Suicidal Ninja Monkeys; LustSickPuppy; A Horse A Spoon A Bucket; Wolves of Glendale; We Don’t Ride Llamas
Suicidal Ninja Monkeys
Watching the video for “Send ’Em Off,” I found myself distracted by trying to place the singer’s accent. Eventually I settled on “European,” because I’m a genius.
Surely Suicidal Ninja Monkeys want me to focus on the strident anti-war message of the song—released a month before Russia invaded Ukraine—via the simple lyrics: “They send them off to Hell / To defend the lies they tell / We pretend we’re doing well.”
I’ve been laboriously learning Spanish for the past year, and now I think that speaking a second language is basically a super power. I don’t know how anyone does it. So respect to these guys, even if Suicidal Ninja Monkeys is a bad name. And Monkeys Have a Tale is a bad album title, but I wouldn’t even know how to make a pun in Spanish, so again, respect.
Anyway, judging by the +47 country code on their Facebook page and that they’re on a label called Fucking North Pole Records, they’re from Norway. As far as the name? I can’t find an explanation. Google tells me Suicidal Ninja Monkeys would be “Självmordsbenägna ninjaapor” in Norwegian, so it was a good idea to go with English.
LustSickPuppy
On the other end of the information spectrum, the origin of “shape-shifting sex canine from outer space” LustSickPuppy is readily available.
You’d think an extra-terrestrial sex dog would have a crazy story, but nope. Per Metal magazine, LustSickPuppy was “a Instagram handle with no real thought put into it except ‘oh that’s cute.’”
But a 2020 interview in Paper (RIP) got more conceptual, with LustSickPuppy noting the name “originated in the height of my promiscuity,” when she decided to take “complete control of my sexual journey.”
That’s what makes my music and stage performance so intimate. I am inviting an audience to see me raw, bruised, loved and hated. Writing music about all my shitty experiences with lovers, relationships and whatever else allows for me to be vulnerable and seen. It is the relationship of how I present to the world and how I really feel about myself. LustSickPuppy is the embodiment of “you want me, but you do not deserve me.” She is the bite on your neck, the goosebumps on your skin, the tightness in your jeans and the fear in your heart.
She is also the juggalo on your Instagram feed:
However, I think LustSickPuppy’s aggressive music would confuse the ninjas as the next Gathering. Skittering percussion sideswipes snatches of melody, often filtered through bury-the-needle distortion, into a caustic whole. When she’s not howling with the chaos, LustSickPuppy sounds like Ninja from the Go! Team… in the midst of ketamine psychosis. I’m kind of into it?
A Horse a Spoon a Bucket
Winner, Most Logical Logo:
We’ve spoken quite a bit about what I call “snark entrapment,” and a Horse a Spoon a Bucket qualifies. First, on Bandcamp the group self-describes as “adventure pop, surrealist myth-wave, and rock ’n’ whimsy.” I first read that as “mirth-wave,” which would have triggered an immediate veto with maximum prejudice. No, turns out I can’t read.
Second, there’s this:
Per an interview, the wizard is Magic Ian, “a sorcerer who can also rock.” The cape, the wizard hat, the magic wand, the aforementioned whimsy—it may as well be mirth-wave.
The group’s latest, “Adventures in Hill City!”, seems to be a concept album or musical or kids’ music, or maybe all of the above? In it, Magic Ian uses magic to rip open a portal to another world called Magic Baby Island, and I’m going to stop typing now.
2021’s ¡Y Mi Abuela, También! concerned itself with this world and songwriter John Sanchez’s place in it, including “family history, mixed-race identity, California history, romance, and the deconstruction of the Latin male psychology.”
That’s all well and good, but do you remember the scene in Y Tú Mama También where Gael García Bernal delivers the titular line? “Mi abuela” means “my grandmother”—DID I MENTION I SPEAK SPANISH?*—and swapping those words would make that scene even more transgressive. Sanchez probably didn’t consider that, but I did, because I have white-knuckled it through a screening of Y Tú Mama También with a small group of strangers.
Wolves of Glendale
“COMEDY MUSIC THAT DOESN’T SUCK” blares the website for this yacht-rocking trio, and “DOESN’T SUCK” is circled for good measure. Joke-music luminary Jack Black even says so, kind of, in their bio: “The thing about Wolves of Glendale is… they sound fucking fantastic.” Keeping it in the family, the group’s debut full-length—due out January 2024—is being produced by John Spiker, who performs with and has produced Tenacious D.
The humor of the name probably doesn’t land outside of the LA area, where Glendale is a suburb known for its large Armenian population and shameful history of sundown laws. But it kills in LA. They should play with the Burbank Vibe Center and Sherman Oaks!
We Don’t Ride Llamas
If you imagined We Don’t Ride Llamas looking like this, you’re lying:
What did I imagine? Good question. Probably something like…
Little about We Don’t Ride Llamas is expected. If this florid Austin Chronicle profile is accurate, the four siblings got their start playing Rock Band back when that was a thing. That evolved into playing music for real, using a moniker that even Rock Band’s name generator wouldn’t have attempted.
Only one of several potential monikers bandied about as contenders, We Don’t Ride Llamas took its decisive lead at one of the sibling’s first performances. When a presiding adult tried to brand the nameless group with a particularly unappealing appellation – “The Mitchell Four” – the eccentric name tumbled out of their mouths in response. Call it a defensive impulse.
“There was a period where we felt ambivalent about the name. ‘Why'd we choose that? It’s too goofy.’ But we definitely came around and embraced the silliness,” explains Chase [Mitchell, guitarist]. “We can tell who’s high-strung by how they respond to our band name.”
The “band name as litmus test” is a classic move, though usually it’s employed in service of something more obscene and/or confrontational. We Don’t Ride Llamas could be on a double bill with a Horse a Spoon a Bucket for a school fund-raiser. (And judging by how nice the Mitchell clan seems to be, they’d probably be down for it.)
POST-SCRIPTS
* I don’t, but I’m very clumsily trying. I say “Lo siento” a lot.
If you’ve never seen Y Tú Mama También, there’s a lot of sex and jerking off. It makes for awkward viewing with a small group of strangers watching it because they’re learning Spanish.
LustSickPuppy’s “Monster Mash”-inspired “Graveyard Smash” reimagines “an orgy, but spooky.” Someone needs to introduce her to “Monster Fuck” by Leo Karpatze (Nick Wiger) from Comedy Bang! Bang!, which I mentioned in BNB #24.
We Don’t Ride Llamas is currently fundraising to record a full-length. As of this writing, they have $59,000 to go.
Don’t forget you can find nearly every band featured in Band Name Bureau on our Spotify playlist, which is now 15 and a half hours long. I defy you to listen to the whole thing.