Making Love With Fear

What's up with the platypus? It's like a duck smeared over a beaver, but then it swims like an otter and, really, what sort of mammal lays eggs, anyway? It's totally ridiculous and probably alien, but somehow it grows on you. It's devil-may-care impudence strikes you, suddenly. Almost regal, the glorious, shameless beast.

Fing's Making Love With Fear is like that. The aura of eclectic WTFism hits like a insult, at first. Opening track “Don't Talk” harkens back to Faith No More, complete with creepy nasalings over a driving disco beat, but then dance tune “Rock the Hips” suggests Moving Units sampled by New Kids on the Block.

“This Road” could be a lost track from Flight of the Concords with wahed-out reggae riffs and falsetto Prince confessions of love. “Murderous Robot,” for better or worse, summons both Daft Punk and System of a Down. Really.

Fing's varied identities come to a head in “Makin' Some Soup,” a radio-friendly jam about, ya know, soup. “Deep and Dark,” the bastard mammal's hidden poison prong (on the heel, look it up), is a dead-ringer for Cannibal Corpse, complete with generic and possibly ironic (oh, yes, they did) death metal lyrics. Zing!

• Album: Making Love With Fear (2010)
• Artist: Fing
• Label: Basstanic Recordings
• Songs: (1) Don't Talk (2) Courageous Knight (3) Rock the Hips (4) This Road (5) Lightning Bolt (6) Murderous Robot (7) Throw the Liar Down the Well (8) Makin' Some Soup (9) There's a Monster Comin' (10) Blue Bird (11) Deep and Dark