I prefer this album to their second one for a few reasons. For one, the best song on “Let Us Never Speak of It again” kind of harked back to the weird fests of this one (Dear Mr. Bush, There Are over 100 Words for Shit and Only 1 for Music. Fuck You, Out Hud). Plus, this one doesn’t feel the need to win you over with coy lyrics and other cutesy effects.
Actually, Street Dad has a large amount of instability running through its vein. The song structures in this album are unsound, which is truly a delight once dealing with dance music. Most dance music focuses purely on groove, and tends to avoid these strange sidesteps. “Dad, There's A Little Phrase Called Too Much Information”. Oh yes, that song sort of sums up their purpose. Grooves are built up only to be overwhelmed with additional blasts of over-distorted drum kicks.
Plus, there is that cello. Here they display it prominently. It adds to the groove, making it almost classical dance music, almost. “Hair Dude, You're Stepping on My Mystique” shows off some very nice cello playing, along with their aforementioned love of instability.
“The L Train Is a Swell Train and I Don’t Want to Hear You Indies Complain” is the best track on here. First, it is kind of a funny name, especially considering how the L train has become the gentrification express rather than something to be worried about. But there’s everything they are good at here: abrupt shifts, actual emotion, grooves, cello, etc. It is amazing how much inspiration they drew for this from the awkwardly named great project "Peter Gordon and the Love of Life Orchestra", right down to the length and classical influences.
I sort of wish that Out Hud continued with their project, but I know that (!!!) gained too much prominence for them to ignore that avenue. Also, many of these players ended up being in the even cooler LCD Soundsystem. Oh well, I guess we still have this to remember them by.