Review Summary: Son, I am disappoint.
Perhaps somewhat outrageously, I have listened to The Lonely Island’s debut
Incredibad more times than
Loveless or
Exile on Main St. or any Velvet Underground album.
Incredibad does not, of course, suggest the kind of timeless, life-changing/affirming power that these other albums do, yet it is miraculously compelling; an unparalleled marriage of top-notch comedy and musical accomplishment. The ecstatic highs of singles “I’m on a Boat” and “Boombox” harmonize with brilliant album cuts like “Santana DVX” and “Dreamgirl”. It is ridiculously funny and, perhaps more importantly, incredibly listenable.
For over two years I have awaited the return of the The Lonely Island, and here it is:
Turtleneck & Chain. This is, yes, the same trio of wacky dudes making professional beats and irreverent rhymes. But I am not appeased.
Turtleneck & Chain is a surprisingly remarkable step down from their debut that fails to recapture almost any of the same magic. Where
Incredibad soared (namely in originality and musical longevity),
Turtleneck & Chain falters. Many of the album's ideas seem underdeveloped and flat, and entire songs (which seemed unintended for album placement) from months or even years ago have been re-hashed.
One of the greatest things about
Incredibad is that the music transcends the need for visual accompaniment: the absurdly imaginative “Like a Boss” just works better when the images are devised in the listener’s mind; the outstanding title track didn’t even result in a video. On
Turtleneck & Chain, Samberg’s “So many things to throw on the ground: like this, and this, and that and even this!” simply doesn’t make sense when separated from the original digital short “On the Ground”. “I Just Had Sex” is similarly less successful without its epic video.
One wonders if any serious consideration was taken into removing “Japan” from the album in light of this year’s tragic natural disasters. Even if taste was no issue, the track isn’t funny: the punchline is that no matter what The Lonely Island rap about their label will “[have] to pay for it”, so that they can just dick around while putting no effort into making an actual song, which is exactly what the results sound like.
This is a consistent problem with
Turtleneck & Chain: several tracks simply
aren’t funny. “Shy Ronnie 2” is somehow worse than the already unfunny original; “The Creep” is a failed dance-rap parody with a sub-par Nicki Minaj verse; both “Mama” and “Attracted to Us” manage to beat a simple, stupid idea to death in less than two-and-a-half minutes (the latter featuring Beck, for some reason); the two-year-old “Motherlover” is nothing if not an inferior version of “Dick in a Box”.
There are several notable exceptions that prevent the album from being a total failure: “We’re Back” and “Trouble on Dookie Island” are riveting, energetic and hilarious; “No Homo” and the title track are both genuinely funny and enjoyable. Unfortunately, the album is shockingly uneven and I refuse to believe that this is The Lonely Island doing their best. While they may have “started this fake-rap sh*t”, they’ve done an unconvincing job of keeping it alive.
