The Tinklers - Casserole - Cassette

The first album by the duo of Charles Brohawn and Chris Mason sets the tone for the rest of their career: a bizarre collection of 38 songs, nearly a third of them under a minute long and only a handful breaking the two-minute barrier, and performed on a minimalist setting of banjo, guitar, and percussion interspersed with dadaist spoken-word poetry. However, as much as Casserole might seem like a comedy album at first pass, a more careful listen proves that for all the surface whimsy, these are at heart some fairly creepy, disturbing tales. The nearly five-minute "Norman Meyer" tells the true story of a man protesting nuclear proliferation who took the Washington Monument hostage in the early '80s and was killed by the National Guard after a brief standoff, while the similar "Elenor Bumpers" rails against the police shooting of an elderly woman during an eviction proceeding gone awry. In these surroundings, even comparatively lighthearted material like "Mommy Cooks Inside, Daddy Cooks Outside" and "Don't Put Your Fingers in the Sex Places" sounds kinda creepy and unnerving. File somewhere between Half Japanese and the Residents.

Track Listing
1. Turn The Screw On The Crank
2. Juvenile Delinquency
3. Ghost Dance Song
4. Norman Meyer
5. Elenor Bumpers
6. Don't Put Your Finger In The Fan
7. Simple Song of Simple Faith
8. Magazine
9. I Love a Sandwich
10. Tree Song
11. What Kind of God
12. Home By The River
13. Little League
14. Luther League
15. Hokey Pokey
16. Scary, Not Scary
17. Patty Wood
18. Mom Cooks Inside, Dad Cooks Outside
19. My Eyes Look Into Your Eyes
20. Don't Put Your Finger in the Sex Places
21. Tough Guys Are Probably Sad Inside
22. I'm Proud to Be a Citizen of the Roman Empire
23. Splish Splash
24. We're Not Alone
25. Workin' Together United We Are One
26. Burpin' Fungus People
27. Bear Came Around
28. Maybe
29. Black Dog, Friendly Dog
30. Joan of Arc
31. Lust for Life
32. Water's Rushin'
33. Whale Song
34. Mutations
35. Thinking Too Much
36. Lois Lane
37. Panic Is On, The
38. I Think We're Alone