"Who is David Candy?" asks David Candy's website at Jetset Records. Behind that practiced indifference, you're asking yourself the same thing. I can feel it. Well? A full 99% of the tiny subculture that listens to indie and punk rock doesn't and won't give a shit who David Candy is, and chances are, you won't either. Unless, perhaps, you were a big fan of Gospel-Mod jokesters the Make-Up or its predecessor, the sartorially influential, always funny, and often brilliant Nation of Ulysses. If you haven't figured it out by now, David Candy is the goofy and latest past-time of Ian Svenonius. Interestingly, David Candy is also proof that Svenonius can hit actual notes at will and that his erstwhile atonalism was a matter of choice, not defect.

It comes as no surprise that Play Power is packed full of the maddening mix of humor, nonsense, and political/philosophical rambling upon which Svenonius has built his bizarre reputation. We wonder if it's all a big joke. Is he partly serious? Is he the reigning king of irony or just an eccentric dandy with a penchant for tracts and manifestos? Well, as always, that's for him to know and for us to find out-- and, of course, we never will.

Who cares? If nothing else, Svenonius is consistently entertaining. As in the Make-Up, Svenonius, in character as David Candy, explores his fascination with all things 60's, putting his own highly idiosyncratic stamp on trashy pop-psychedelia. "Play Power: David Candy Theme" heads off the album. The song consists entirely of surfy-cum-big band drumming and sharp, almost random organ bursts for two minutes, immediately setting the tone and establishing historical context for the rest of the songs.

"Incomprehensibly Yours" then sets the absurdist lyrical tone for the remainder of the disc. Orchestral 60's, movie-score style pop-- replete with xylophone and harp-- plays while Candy does an uncomfortably intimate-sounding voiceover, spacing his short phrases out as if he were reading ingredients: "Hi. I'm David Candy. Don't Worry. I will look after you. I understand you. I already know you. I have always known you. From this moment, you will never be alone again. I will always be next to you. You'll never have to feel abandoned anymore. Every time you put out your hand, you'll find mine to hold. You won't have to try to escape anymore. At last, you can stop running. Your loneliness is over. We will have a perfect life. You are no longer shipwrecked. No longer desperate. I know that you've been searching. Now that you found me, you don't have to search anymore. I'm the one that you've always been waiting for. And now I'm here. With you. Forever."

"Listen to the Music" finds Candy covering Davie Allen and the Arrows' song from the soundtrack to Wild in the Streets, a 60's trash-cinema classic. The recording sounds authentically of-the-era-- gritty and warm, with clean, trebly guitar and rich harmonies. "Redfuchsiatamborinegravel" is the funniest of Play Power's seven tracks; Candy discusses his art leanings ("the best art attracts the best people") extolling the genius of Kasimir Malevich and Vladimir Mayakovsky. While on "Incomprehensibly Yours" Candy affected the cadence of someone reading from a shopping list, here he actually goes on to read ingredients and cooking instructions for his favorite food-- Mafarca pudding-- finishing it off with a polite "buen apetito." But he's not done yet.

His favorite place is Sao Paulo, you know. Its architecture, the locals' "rampant public licentiousness," and its juice bars all earn a mention. All the while, a hilariously repetitive Spanish guitar phrase repeats. This, like most of the album, is perfect background party music. That is, if you want people stopping their tipsy conversations in mid-sentence to ask each other, "What the fuck is this?"

The second of the album's three covers, "Bad Bad Boy," was Mike Leander's contribution to the Privilege soundtrack, and while Candy's version is charming and well-executed, it ultimately seems a little pointless. Play Power's final two tracks include a nineteen-minute, jammy opus of spoken nonsense and organ noodling ("Diary of a Genius") and "Komeda's Lullaby" from the Rosemary's Baby soundtrack.

This is not a stocking-stuffer. In fact, the absurdly limited appeal of this album prompted me to rate it a point lower than I otherwise might have. What it does well is mimic the sound and feel of a certain type of 60's period-music and, of course, amuse to no end. I actually think this would make great party background music, but I might be alone here. So while I can't quite recommend this to the public at large, any fan of Svenonius' previous bands might want to pick this up.

-Camilo Arturo Leslie