Review Summary: An album both abysmally pathetic and fascinating as a work of outside art.
An obvious statement about Christian and the Hedgehog Boys is that they are one of the most utterly talentless bands to ever exist, but this would be inaccurate. Christian and the Hedgehog Boys are not a band at all, but the solo project of a thoroughly disturbed individual, Christian (later Christine) Weston Chandler of Ruckersville, Virginia. The "Hedgehog Boys" are in fact merely characters from Chandler's "Sonichu" comic series, which is to art what this project is to music. Chandler, however, not quite living in the same reality as the rest of us, believes his poorly proportioned creations to be real, to the point of claiming to have married some of them.
Unlike Chandler's fellow band members, the music on offer hear is all too real, though it is certainly not "real" in any terms of musical authenticity. Literally every song on this album consists of Chandler's blithely tuneless wailing over another artist's song, with the original lyrics frequently being audible underneath. To Chandler's dubious credit, his lyrics are at least frequently more entertaining than those of the original work, offering an insight into his comical worldview.
The opening song, "So Need A Cute Girl", by far Chandler's most famous, is one of the best examples of this. Over the tune of a dull Backstreet Boys song, Chandler moans about his failure to get laid, as if everything else about this album didn't make these issues rather obvious. His pitiful "Tell me why I'm stuck as a virgin with rage / Tell me why I so need a cute girl my age" and "Why do all of the jerks get all of the pretty girls / You may not notice, but I want you to know that I am a lonesome heart!" epitomise all too well the asinine ravings of the "incel" movement, blaming everyone and everything but their own repulsive personalities for why pretty ladies aren't seduced by the sight of them. "Feel So Lonesome", sung over a Britney Spears song, is even more pessimistic, discussing self-harm in Chandler's typically inept fashion: "Tell me, don't I have the charm? / If no girl comes, I'll break my arm." "BFF's (Best Friends Forever)" is directed at Chandler's former crush Sarah Hammer and her then boyfriend Wes Iseli, lamenting that she no longer wants to be with him: "You hang out with your new friends you made / And your boyfriend who acts as a Black Sonichu". With these lyrics, Chandler incorporates characters from the "Sonichu" mythos into his music, creating a bizarre fusion of fantasy and reality which reflects the world as he sees it.
Nonetheless, this record is not merely a series of musical rants about Chandler's virgnity, and other songs cover a diverse range of subjects; even Chandler realises that his audience may find 8 songs of moaning about his lack of sexual prowess a little tiresome. "A-U-T-I-S-M", sung over another Backstreet Boys tune, describes his struggles with the condition, but downplays it as merely a minor inconvenience, pointing out that he made honor roll; the fact this was probably a gesture of pity by the teachers eludes him. "Yellow Is A Mellow Color", meanwhile, is intended as light relief sung over the tune of the Macarena, or what Chandler describes as "random-access humour"; to everyone else, this means utter nonsense, but is it really any more surreal than the rest of his life? "La Cocina en La Casa de Casanova", sung entirely in Spanish over a Ricky Martin song, describes a wild party of the sort that Chandler imagined the "jerks" enjoying: "¡Hay muchas chicas y niñas aquÃ* en la casa! / ¡Casanova está muy feliz porque está hacienda cosas calientes!" (There are many girls here in the house / Casanova is very happy because he's doing hot/sexy things). Unfortunately for Chandler, this saw little success in the Spanish music market.
The remaining songs on the record, "Sonichu Zip" and the closing track, "Christian and the Hedgehog Boys Theme", concern the characters of the Sonichu mythos. Depending on one's tolerance for preposterously poor artwork and storytelling, reading the comics can give some insight into the meaning of the lyrics; a brief summary would be that Sonichu and his fellow "electric hedgehog Pokemon" are combinations of Sonic the Hedgehog and Pokemon, who fight various villains frequently based on people from Chandler's real life. "Sonichu Zip" is in fact sung over a song called "Sonic Drive" about Sonic the Hedgehog, demonstrating the degree of copyright infringement in Chandler's work. I suspect, though, that Chandler could make a case for fair use in terms of parody; no one is likely to confuse his work with the original. The final track is unusual in that the song it is sung over is instrumental, bringing Chandler's laughable vocals to the fore. The lyrics proclaim a glorious future for the band: "Christian and the Hedgehog Boys will rock the world!"
Sadly for Chandler, this did not happen. The album, recorded in 2003 when Chandler was 21, went completely unnoticed until Internet trolls took interest in him in 2007. After this, it and Chandler's subsequent works have received a significant amount of exposure, but only as objects of mockery and derision.
When assigning a rating to an album, a reviewer must decide whether to rate purely on the quality of the music, or the significance of the album in general. In this case, I have gone with the former, and given this the worst rating I can give; if I could give a zero or negative rating, I could, since this album is truly devoid of any artistic merit. Yet, as a work of outsider art, the album remains an interesting curio - the voice of a delusional man who recognises that he is a pitiful failure, and yet believes he is destined for greatness.
