“Sometimes it’s hard to be a famous dude,” sings Quan Yeomans on ‘All Fake Everything’. There was a lot of rejoicing from long time fans when it was announced that Regurgitator were releasing a new album after what seemed to be a 4 year hiatus. While they haven’t really officially released anything in that time, we’ve seen snippets of songs here and there, snap shots of the band taking their time to release something they’d be happy with. The end result is SuperHappyFunTimesFriends, an album you can purchase on any format you’d like. I got the cassette. Because, well, cassettes are pretty cool.
Regurgitator have never really been a band to take seriously, and while this album has its touching moments we still see the Regurgitator we’ve come to know and love. SuperHappyFunTimesFriends has a much stronger punk feel than previous albums, typical of the band to never really stick to a style for too long. I much prefer their hip hop stuff for the most part, but there are some really great moments here. ‘Be Still my Noisy Mind’, ‘No Show’ and lead single ‘One Day’ are the highlights, showing a slightly more serious (well, at least less nonsensical by comparison) lyrical side to a backdrop of catchy pop-rock. ‘Punk Mum’ is fantastic, a stereotypically pop-punk piece dedicated to Yeomans’ mum and ‘Super Happy Funtime’ is an interesting insight into Ben Ely’s mind (ie, random as fuck). ‘All Fake Everything’ is really the only hip hop style track on the album and those who haven’t been fans of the band for a while would see it as somewhat of a random addition.
It’s a short album, clocking in at just over 30 minutes. And with about half of the tracks just barely hitting the 2 minute mark, you can’t help but feel that some of this is just filler between much better songs. ‘DMT 4 2’ and ‘Devil Spell’ don’t really add anything of substance to the album at all. Mirco-track ‘Game Over Dude’ does provide a nice segue been ‘One Day’ and ‘All Fake Everything’ though. SuperHappyFunTimesFriends certainly isn’t as immediately impressive as previous albums, but you have to give the band some credit for just doing their own thing on their own terms.
Music For The Laundromat 