Review Summary: Do the Harlem Shake! No, wait...
Say what you will about the strange vocal stylings and musical eccentricities of Crash Test Dummies, but they were never a band to rest on one particular sound for too long. While they saw their commercial peak with a gentle folk rock sound, it’s a bit astonishing how many steps they’d take to abandon this style further down the road. Still, you can hear a pretty clear transformation from album to album;
The Ghosts that Haunt Me is their most earnest and folk-driven record,
God Shuffled His Feet imbued that sound with a more alternative rock-oriented feel, and
A Worm’s Life abandoned folk entirely for a guitar-heavy approach. And what about
Give Yourself a Hand? Well, it’s hard to know where to even begin.
While we’re on the subject of stylistic change, I suppose I should start with the fact that this sounds absolutely nothing like Crash Test Dummies on a musical level. Traditional instruments have been traded out for hip-hop beats and soulful synths, largely stemming from the urban influence of frontman Brad Roberts’ new home in Harlem. There’s even a nice dose of mid-90s trip-hop that’s added to the mix, making vocalist/keyboardist Ellen Reid’s ballads some of the strongest tunes on the album because of the smooth keyboards and hypnotic beats that define them. Meanwhile, Roberts himself is as strange as ever. He retains much of the irony and bizarre comedic tone of past efforts, but it all comes off as even more offbeat when you have to set that stuff to genres that the Dummies were never familiar with in the first place. Listening to him rap about “talking to his dick” in a song like “I Want to Part-ay,” for instance, is pretty goddamn awkward.
And yet, for all the quirky curiosities spawned from
Give Yourself a Hand there’s an odd charm that does pull it through. For one thing, not
everything from the band’s older records is lost here. Roberts’ voice, while something whose novelty wears off by the end of the album, is still entertaining to listen to and continues to bring a unique dynamic to the music. His singing still blends beautifully with Reid’s, and he even manages to bring in some decent falsetto for tracks like “A Cigarette is All You Get” and “Keep a Lid on Things.” And speaking of Reid, it’s worth noting that this album was the first time people got to hear her perform lead vocals; it’s also worth noting that she absolutely runs circles around Roberts in that respect. The songs of hers that I was referring to earlier - “Just Chilling,” “Get You in the Morning,” and “A Little Something” - are easily among the biggest highlights because Reid can juggle sincerity and irony almost perfectly between the tracks. In “Just Chilling” she gives off a vibe that says “get the fuck away from me,” but in a smooth, apathetic way that’s a lot fun to listen to. The latter tracks are much more atmospheric and sprawling, giving her the chance to really show off her chops in a more genuine and heartfelt musical setting.
Give Yourself a Hand is a strange little record, but I do find myself coming back to it a lot. At the very least, it was pretty ambitious of Crash Test Dummies to keep exploring uncharted territories and not rest on their laurels; it’s neat that their cult fanbase has appreciated such musical diversity over the years, even if their commercial heyday has long past expired. You might want to pick this one up if you want to hear a different side of Crash Test Dummies, or if you just want to hear some quirky hip-hop/trip-hop tunes that have a bit of soul sprinkled throughout.
