Cartoon - Nyuck Nyuck Boing!

After an impressive S/T EP, Cartoon is here to announce themselves with a BANG, and not the kind that unfurls on a little white flag from the end of a prop gun. Instead, the aptly named Nyuck Nyuck Boing! is packed to the gills with the kind of songs that are bound to have your heart thumping out of your chest and steam whistling out of your ears. 

“Steam Room” kicks things off with a frenetic energy evocative of New York’s own DNA, zigzagging sparse guitar and synth over a hounding, pounding rhythm section. Their penchant for chaotic, angular punk energy is accentuated by their clear love for the krautrock scene of a still-divided Berlin. “Nurses” offers the kind of free jazz inspired rambling emblematic of genre-stalwarts such as Popol Vuh before diving into the more groove driven inclinations of acts such as Amon Duul II. 

However, as Cartoon continuously twists and reshapes krautrock’s most sacred convictions, it is The Lounge Lizards they most often call to mind. Songs such as “Dynamite” poke and prod at those who came before them, manipulating genre trappings almost to the point of parody. However such a wry acknowledgement would never work without an obvious, unadulterated love for the source material, such as that of John Lurie and crew. 
Nyuck Nyuck Boing! ends on what everyone wants from such a kraut rock inspired album: two, seven minute long songs. “Up Doc”, the first of the two, is seemingly their nod to the more freakish tendencies of Faust, while “Pants on Fire” is the kind of long-winded, jamming exploration that makes NEU!’s biggest hits so attractive. Coupled with impeccable cover art by Philadelphia artist Matthew Adis, Nyuck Nyuck Boing! is as cohesive an aesthetic package as there is to give.