When a band titles a song "Scooby Doo," and it features such a stellar chorus as, "Scooby, Scooby Doo, wuh-unh-aaah-unh," it's clear that, somewhere along the way, the guys were slipped an extra dose of retardation. Not to insult those afflicted with mental and physical disabilities. On the contrary-- Down's Syndrome and the like are fairly common, utterly blameless afflictions. It's the special retardation of albums like Rolling Like an Egg-- which are clearly the product of otherwise able-minded individuals-- that pisses me off.

The big problem with Mondo Fumatore is their banal obsession with irony. By most people's definition of the term (and by Webster's), this involves saying one thing while implying another. But while Mondo Fumatore are certainly saying things both musically and lyrically, the implication that anything more is going on is lost in the mix. Neither clever nor charming, the band resorts to summoning the sensibilities of wacky trendiness.

The music here consists of shambolic guitar and drum pop. To add some layers to the mix, Mondo Fumatore employs some sort of keyboard-induced sound-effect silliness. At best, it's a shoddy attempt at replicating the tossed off strangeness of early Pavement or Beck. Songs like "Beat My Levitation" try to get by on a kind of awkward kitchen-sink pop-rock groove, but somehow end up sounding like musical auditions for a Volkswagen commercial. Choruses with whiny vocals crooning, "I'm gonna beat my levitation/ I wanna be a part of a rock formation," have a certain bland emptiness that makes one cringe. "Dance" features a slow, simple guitar line (which occasionally becomes immersed in white noise) that works well enough, but even Fumatore's finer moments lose their charm by the time you hit the clunky, seemingly deliberately crappy chorus.

That Mondo Fumatore doesn't have it in them to be a better band is very apparent throughout the 17 songs featured on Rolling Like an Egg. There are two questions to ask: How good would that better band be? And how would it have been to just try?

-Samir Khan