Gravy Train!!!!
All the Sweet Stuff
2007
C-
’m a chubby chaser, and unless you consider Taj Mahal and Sir Mix-A-Lot a fun Saturday night, my ilk could definitely use better theme music. Sure, I love the idea of Beth Ditto and Kelly Osbourne shaking their shitters like they were Shakira-sized, but their albums on the whole have considerably less dimension than their tuchises. Missy Elliott is unquestionably great, but it’s harder and harder to buy her “cute face, chubby waist” routine as she willows down to Jennifer Hudson the way Jennifer Hudson is willowing down to Beyonce. Blues-belting ex-porn star Candye Kane is burlesque fantastique (known to play piano with her legendary bazookas at shows) but anyone who’s given their Brian Setzer Orchestra CDs over to the bargain bin knows that appetites for swingy novelties don’t last very long.
So here comes the giddily sexed-up queertet Gravy Train!!!!, with their Kill Rock Stars-approved Casio jams bragging about “thick ass Mexican thighs” and fantasies about giving birth to burger babies and now I’m ready to be happy. Front-hottie’s named Chunx, and she’s unafraid to rap about her body from top to bottom (literally, first song on their debut’s called “Titties Bounce,” and the final track was christened “Pussy Thrusts”). What’s not to like? Well, except for an uproarious novelty dis called “Hella Nervous,” (“Long in the face, short in the wiener / Suckin’ my muff like a vacuum cleaner,”) said album, Hello Doctor sounded like drunken Peaches karaoke recorded on a four-track in a Burger King parking lot. But then they got good! Are You Wigglin’ subtracted the dumb skits and added hooks, most notably the Castlevania-inspired organ riff solidifying the self-explanatory “I Wanna Wanna Wanna Wanna Wanna Wanna Wanna Get Rid of You.” The jokes were fewer, but it did contain a public service announcement for your boobs against the dangers of fad diets.
Which brings us to the decidedly less wacky All the Sweet Stuff. The title tune is dynamite, pondering around more twisty organ “how you’d look on my face,” before exploding into the band’s most indelible chorus to date. One hopes this first impression will lead into the band’s first pure pop excursion, until uh-oh, here comes those unsanitary 808s from Album One again, laced with congested come-ons (“you have a wiener…strip for me”) for a criminally boring Prince parody called “Strip 4 Me.” And then “Wutcha Doin’ Tonite,” unsuccessfully tries to pull the “Wanna Wanna Wanna…” trick again. “Club Situation,” (rhymes with “fill you in like an application”) tries to move in on the Rapture-motivated cowbell craze, but the clumsy rapping and homogenous backdrop are doubtful to make anyone “Pass the Crisco / Take me to the disco.”
The debut at least had that jokey debut charm, but here the good-natured humor gyps you on the hooky promise of Album Two. Worst of all, there’s not a chub-pride anthem in sight. I blame Chunx, who attests on her MySpace blog that she no longer eats “hot dogs dipped in peanut butter” or “quesadillas as a burger topping,” and portends willowing down to Jennifer Hudson herself. Does anyone remember the Fat Boys album where they stopped rapping about food? Yeah.

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Reviewed by: Dan Weiss Reviewed on: 2007-09-06 Comments (0) |



