Lotterboys – Animalia

Put Them All to Sleep

Lotterboys are a German trio who prop themselves up as an electronic “super-group.” The cover of their debut album Animalia is graced by what appears to be a rodent wind-blown and teased out to look like a porcupine, hedgehog, or something else more imposing than what it actually is. This proves as apt a metaphor as any for the music beyond that cover, which finds the three musicians throwing a lot of attitude and volume into the ears in a failed attempt to give their unabashedly clichéd songs more impact.Things kick off rather tepidly with the faux-funk opener “Star Whores” and deteriorate from there. As its title implies, these guys are clearly whoring for something but you wouldn’t think it’s stardom so much as attention, with their derivative beats and uninspired lyrics (how many ways can one be expected to hear funk used as an expletive?) delivered with obnoxious, almost caricatured vocals. The subsequent “Heroine” is so desperate it even throws in an anonymous female to repeat unconvincing refrains of “Oh yeah.” Thou doth protest way too much.

The less said about what follows, the better, though each song simultaneously sounds lazier and more bloated, with shriller slap bass-lines, more pained vocals and cruder, more juvenile choruses. “Can’t Control the Boogie” will make one wish they just knew how to stop it while “Involvement’s” lyrics could either be pot-smoking for dummies or detail how brainstorming for the album took place, depending on one’s cynicism. I haven’t even gotten into the truly tragic butchering of Black Sabbath’s “Iron Man.” With closing freak-out “Wired and Tired,” one will be left only feeling the latter, and more than a little frustrated.

Given how far the dance-rock hybrid has evolved in recent years with the likes of LCD Soundsystem and Cut Copy, Lotterboys just sound like a clique of lame wannabes who crashed a party where they weren’t invited. This particular breed of Animalia is long overdue for extermination.