PFFR
United We Doth (Birdman Records)
Reviewed by Erick Mertz

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Now that I've had a cold shower, a warm cup of coffee and an opportunity to talk with my priest, I may be able to write something remotely objective - perhaps, constructive, about United We Doth, the new album by PFFR. I spent four years on the campus of a major University (Oregon) during a period infamous for a.) Street riots and b.) Rampant anarchism and still, there were moments laid out here in hyper-electro-crazed funk and hip hop that have me frightened.

Listening to New York underground legends PFFR is to hip hop fans what reading about Sabrmetrics is to baseball fans: a breakdown and subsequent analysis so radical it forces a reappraisal of the very fabric of the subject. Those who call themselves "Sabrmetricians" aren't crusty old, two hot dog and beer by the third inning patrons who can smell a shanker in the field from the cheapies, they're NASA drop out number crunchers who've never worn a glove in their lives. To follow the metaphor, PFFR'ers are perhaps not as much the Fubu and Cristal stockholders their contemporaries pose as, as they are reformed Devo worshipping gear heads, Nintendo Players and high water wearing class clowns.

Not convinced this is something you need to necessarily purchase? Well, don't be so fast. The songs are genre defiant, fast paced and laced with a brown acid humor. To hear the constant interplay between two girls, one yelling "I like it French" and the other "I like it hard" on "Un Phat Physique" is lethally catchy. Like all the other PFFR moments of intoxicating wit, don't be caught singing them at work or around your parents. Something like conventional hip hop graces "P.F.R. Booms" but it is more tongue in cheek - more KMFDM slamming Depeche Mode than KMFDM taking their sound too terribly seriously.

Now that I've had all those things and written the review, I'm still not sure what I've heard or how to quantify its sound. If that is the desired effect - an utterly dystopic disorientation brought on by rabid BTM's and aural randomalia - then by all means assume the position and buy United We Doth. I would.

© 2003 - Erick Mertz