Bite the Hand, by Three Minute Tease

Anton Barbeau’s second album with his Three Minute Tease (no hyphen) comes dedicated to his great friend and all-around under-hyped genius, Scott Miller (late of Game Theory, late of the Loud Family, late of the Earth). It isn’t a relentlessly morbid record, but the Ant man does choose to lead off by musing that tears dry long before life ends. In the same seemingly simple song he notes that we can choose to die before we physically expire, if we give up hope, interest, or both.

Subsequent psychedelic convolutions certainly include musings on mortality, though rarely so direct after that lead-off. Songs trail off into electronic afterlife spirals; one ends with heavy slamming, a door (vertical or horizontal makes no difference) smashed shut evermore. If we fade away, we’re supposed to do so bravely (see again that first song). But we ride on intricacy and humor while we’re here to buy tickets.

So when he sings he’s 46 in the year 13, he’s having enormous stoned fun singing the truth about his life, but he knows that a lot of us haven’t caught up to this century yet. Elsewhere he warns that coffee holds just as many terrors as, you know, that stuff that some kids take; turns Italian poultry into the latest dance; and somehow manages not to kill the man who stole his hit song. He’ll vaporize enemies, not with kindness, necessarily, but with mirth and the warmth of his own (warped) hearth.

• Album: Bite the Hand
• Artist: Three Minute Tease
• Label: Idiot Records
• Songs: (1) Bravely Fade Away (2) Drinking Horn (3) MTV Song (4) Drain the River (5) Beanpole (6) Ciao Ciao Chicken (7) When I Was 46 in the Year 13 (8) Tie My Laces (9) Coffee That Makes the Man Go Mad (10) Tell Me (11) Wave Hello