Pitchfork

When Johannes von Weiszacker claims "I am oozing emotion" on the Chap's epic 2005 album Ham, the idea seems both calculated and half-formed, as cleverly laid onto the mix as it was hastily scrawled onto a cocktail napkin. The artful dodgers that make up the Chap spend their time advocating a kind of listless dandy lifestyle, mixing rock riffs, beats, and one-liners that bemusedly rap on the state of pop culture. Extremely high-minded and arty, their very name comes from the Gustav Temple-edited British periodical and series of books satirically advocating a return to a "civilized" lifestyle. Here's the catch: von Weiszacker sings like he's never oozed (or anythinged else for that matter) an ounce of emotion in his life. The wonderful side effect of this superbly fake pop-rock is that it is it is also superb pop-rock.

And Mega Breakfast is the Chap's superbly quirky coming-out party, as they've signed to Ghostly International for their first proper release in the States. Their beats, still emaciated and tinny, are beginning to sound less like they're trying to take the piss out of dance music and more like they've given the disco a much-needed tummy-tuck. These wispy shadows of rhythm back tautly packaged effete yarns ostensibly about something, like the silly human cycle of self-improvement and self-praise ("Fun and Interesting") and the tacit fetishism of world music ("Ethnic Instrument", which itself takes a page from the Talking Heads' touristy post-punk afro-funk), but these songs aren't really about anything in particular. If anything, they're un-songs. I suspect von Weiszacker and the gang (most tracks are sing-alongs) could sing about absolutely anything, like a cow shitting in the forest, and it would still be funny, because they'd be poking fun at cow, the forest, the song, and us for caring about any of it.

So this must be what it's like to listen to indie rock made by aristocrats. Actually, check that: It's indie rock made by aristocrat lyricists-- they've worked too hard on music production to deserve claims of holistic silver spoons. No matter what kind of elitist B.S von Weiszacker spews, Mega Breakfast is much too elusive to serve as idly chuckling pop culture satire. As with Ham, violin accompaniments bow in and out of the mix, and even horns lend their swell and fade on the infuriatingly catchy "Fun and Interesting". On their website, the group claims Mega Breakfast to be a "global smash-hit techno/R&B album," but at its core this record is still a lo-fi exercise. Try imagining the dissonant guitar chords of "Caution Me" on the next friggin' J-Timb joint. Try to jam "Surgery" onto the 8-bit Hall & Oates tribute album for which it so desperately yearns. You really can't rely on any tangible connection between Mega Breakfast and real life, except maybe Enon's classic High Society, a companion record of similarly decadent invective.

On that note, it's true that Enon's jam came from across the pond, from the Grain Belt ennui of Dayton, Ohio, and thus might be the more imaginative achievement. But considering the humble roots of the Chap's debut album The Horse, recorded with one microphone and what sounds like a cassette tape recorder, the same "Beverly Hillbillies" comparison seems especially apt. In other words: anyone who has TV Land can tell you that while you can take the Clampetts out of the Ozarks, you can never take the Ozarks out of the Clampetts. These London patricians sound like they re-learned forty years of modern studio technology-- from Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band onward-- by the time they burned up eighty quid of studio time, but still managed to retain the essence of wit without even breaking a sweat. This helps fulfill the Chap's preferred emotional response: These are people who don't really care all that much about the sincere history of popular music, but they still wouldn't mind too much destroying and rebuilding popular music from the ground up.