Not, of course, a reference to that Johnny Depp vehicle, and for god's sake, don't even think about shoving this disc up your nose. Don't suppose, either, that The Blow-- aka Khaela Maricich, one of many female voices that have popped up on records by the Microphones-- runs in the same pastoral/naturalist vein as its parent band. No, Maricich was thinking of another connotation entirely when renaming herself, and, judging from her third release, it's just about all she thinks about. More succinct and a hell of a lot more direct about her fixations than Maricich's previous touring moniker (the backhandedly suggestive Get the Hell Out of the Way of the Volcano), the name also belies Bonus Album's sometimes playfully, sometimes annoyingly juvenile approach to music-- and sex.

Maricich's last two releases were primarily stripped-down acoustic affairs, but Bonus Album brings in more accompaniment in an attempt to expand her horizons. Unfortunately, there seems to be a lot of fruitless groping around for a sound here. The more minimal songs, consisting only of Maricich's squeaky but serviceable multi-tracked voice, are maddeningly solipsistic; "She Buried Herself in the Air" and "Sing Like Kyle" (as in Kyle Field of another Microphones-related project, Little Wings), are too underdeveloped and formless to make an impression, while "The Touch-Me" struts along convincingly but gets bogged down in retreaded automobile imagery. In "The Moon is There, I Am Here", the observations don't get any deeper than the title, and the affectedly awkward, clipped, Difranco-ish phrasing doesn't change that one bit.

There's hope, though. Maricich's scientific side gets a better airing on "The Democracy of Small Things", where an interesting device (she converses with her own molecules in an attempt to get her urges in agreement) and a feverish synthesizer pulse pleasantly collide. And "Some Chocolates" could be a standard for weird little girls everywhere, with Microphones cohort Mirah leading an odd, insanely catchy pat-a-cake chant: "I brought you back some chocolates/ But they weren't made of chocolates/ They were made of the shapes of my mouth when I'm talking to you." The occasionally blatant come-ons and "jump-rope rhythms" recall Liz Phair, though Maricich's best shots aren't nearly as troubled or troubling as, say, "I'll fuck you till your dick is blue". At most, Maricich is like Phair's little sister doing anatomically correct crayon drawings for you to hang on the fridge.

Ooooh, and Phil Elvrum's come to play! And he brought his drums. He deserves cookies, cookies, cookies for joining his Microphones-mate on "Watch the Water Roll Up", a loose, danceable rhumba tune whose fuller production (pianos, bass, Elvrum's percussion cornucopia) and unpredictable structural swerves provide a welcome change of pace, not just from the rest of the record, but from the original acoustic-and-voice version which appeared on Maricich's 2000 debut, Everyday Examples of People Facing Straight Into the Blow. . The confounding "Little Sally Tutorial", however, brings us right back to where we started. Maricich deadpans the instructions for a kid's song-and-dance game, and, with most of the K Records family joining in, it sounds like Summer Camp for the Prematurely Ironic. Sure, it's kinda funny to hear Calvin Johnson's basso profundo in a song you might've sung as a kid, but here, as on most of the album, a very subjective sort of nostalgia is at work. At summer camp, Maricich was probably making out with some prepubescent hottie behind the equipment shed. Me, I was sent home early after eating a tainted corndog. Where were you?

-Brendan Reid, October 18th, 2002