Spit In the Face of People Who Don't Want to Be Cool

On one level, the Beets clearly mean the title of their debut album, Spit in the Face of People Who Don't Want to Be Cool, to be some sort of a joke (especially given the cryptic humor of their cartoon cover artwork), but let's face it, cool means a lot of different things to a lot of different people. If your idea of a great rock band is someone who can play fast, tight, and loud — anyone from Louis Jordan's Tympani 5 to Slayer — then you're probably going to consider the Beets to be sorely lacking in the cool department. These guys are decidedly lacking in chops, they play as if they learned the songs roughly ten minutes before rolling tape, their vocals suggest three or four junior-high kids lacking in both skill and nerve singing en masse, and the drummer hasn't learned how to play a fill yet. Then again, if your idea of a good time is digging Beat Happening, the Shaggs, or roughly half the bands that popped up on the Back from the Grave compilations, chances are you're going to rank the Beets a lot higher on the cool scale since you (and they) have a taste for the concept of inspired amateurism. If practically anyone could play this music, that may well be the point — as punk rock taught us, technical skill is often the goal of people who don't have much to say but want to say it in a flashy manner, and it's hard not to imagine that the Beets have willfully chosen to embrace substance over style. As for what message the Beets are passing along with their dirt-simple songs and semi-competent performance style, that's a bit hard to say — the recording of this album is on a par with the group's instrumental ability, and the vocals aren't well defined enough amidst the steady drone of the guitars, the thudding of the bass, and the minimal slap of the drums for the lyrics to be especially audible. So it's possible that with the Beets we either have four guilelessly naïve young men opening their hearts to the world in a genuine if slightly clumsy manner, or four artists who are using willful ineptitude as a way of worming their way into our imagination. Either way, it's a greater accomplishment than the slightly dull surface would indicate.