[The gimmick: Make Muscles is a very fast and furious album by Tulsa’s Lizard Police. In the same manner as the album, I decided to write a speed-review.  I would try and capture as much on paper as I could, while listening to the cd on headphones.  I would start writing the instant the music started, and when the last note of the last track ended, I'd have to quit writing. I had to time it out so I could put as much into the article as possible without obsessing and revising, making sure at the end of the 31 minutes I had a final draft.  This is what I came up with.  Only a handful of wording and punctuation errors were corrected.  What appears here is pretty much what I’d wanted to get out of the whole mess.]

Ok I’m just gonna try and fire this one out nice and quick ‘cause good scenes don’t need a pro in a copy room obsessing over meanings, this isn’t some New Coke bullshit gimmick that has no meaning and has to be propped up as something special until two years later you forget that you gave a shit, Lizard Police fire their shit out quick and manic too, so might as well see if I can man-up, huh?

It’s their first album and it’s already better than most bands’ third.

It’s full of chaotic brain knots of joy and heartbreak, it’s like the stuff the sad kids listened to in high school, but it’s exuberant and exciting, it’s everything good about being teenager, even the parts that most of us don’t look back on in fondness.

Why should we give a shit about that?  Because it’s not hard to fake being a teenager, that’s kind of the trip, but being a teenager is like New Coke too, it’s overhyped and fucking stale, but some of us managed.  In Oklahoma especially, surviving your teenage years is so tricky I’m still impressed when I meet people who did it.  I think I did, maybe it’s camaraderie, war vets!!

But deeper into the teenager experience I’m talking about, who from the Oklahoma trenches ever gets out to talk about how fucked up it was to be cool and smart as a kid?  People move away, or chalk it up as a loss, or forget what they started fighting for.

This disc gives all of us romantic losers hope that living isn’t a dying art [I’m sure someone else has used that little witticism before too, btw.]. The Midwest is a gorgeous place to live, but no one can show you how to do it, because by and large NO ONE DOES IT.  You have to figure shit out from the ground up, you’re not gonna get any help from the freaks at Walmart or the greedy scumbags at the megachurch, you get to see record stores come and go like a shooting star but the Best Buy will always be right there where it’s been since you were a kid.

This album seethes with sensitivity, and it’s not self-conscious about it, there is no writing sweet lyrics for sweet lyrics sake, there are far more “cool” things to do in this stupid culture than give a shit or show that you give a shit.

But AH! If you can show you give a shit and fuck people up, that’s a different story, this is some of the most locked on tight thrashness you can find in today’s market economy, there is no “oh sorry me” that isn’t mediated by an even better “fuck you” if need be.  You listen to kids these days and it’s “I’m such a shithead”, and then you wait for them to say something…

One of the easiest things you can do is feel sorry for yourself, but there’s a pretty fucking noteworthy line between “I don’t care” and “I don’t try”.

This is a score for the hometeam, there’s so much nihilism in the world today, everybody seems so pessimistic, like there’s no way beauty counts for anything.  Fuck that, THEY’RE the ones who aren’t trying, and the ones who WANT to try are so demoralized by the other ones, that hardly anyone THINKS THEY CAN.

Lizard Police accomplished a pretty important feat with this album, and I don’t think some of the deeper parts of it will be felt until the next round.  It’s like when you climb up a steep slope that most people can’t hack, but if you can just get up to the plateau you can collapse, scream, cheer, let down your rope for your buddies to come up safer and quicker so they can be up there with you, you can drink whiskey and laugh all night, you can stay up there as long as you want.

There’s so much good to say about this disc that has to be heard, it’s really an experience worth getting into, I’ve played it for two music fans today, both were blown away, within the first 30 seconds.  Okay, asshole?  It’s pretty fucking good, and before you dismiss this as simply Okie self-propping, listen to it before you take the pessimism and fuckheadedness that’s out there as your own.  A lot of crazy shit going on in the world today, but here at home things are getting better.

(THIS WAS WRITTEN ENTIRELY WITHIN THE SPACE ONE LISTEN OF MAKE MUSCLES.  THAT’S UNDER 31 MINUTES, COCHESE.  THAT SHOULD BE THE STRONGEST COMPLIMENT IN THIS ARTICLE.  THINK ABOUT IT.)

-B. Whisenhunt (Jan 8, 2011)

Lizard Police’s new CD, Make Muscles, is out now on Little Mafia Records.

Copies of Make Muscles are available for purchase at Tulsa’s The Soda Shoppe, and other fine Oklahoma music retailers.