The Chap: Well Done Europe

It shouldn’t come as much of a surprise that the experimental-pop spoofers in The Chap built a tune around a guitar track that stubbornly refused to budge from their computer, or that the odd Bruce Springsteen or Neil Young lyric occasionally sneaks into a song like a dollop of disconcerting sincerity atop layers of ironic detachment. It’s only music, after all, and on Well Done Europe, as on 2008’s gloriously daft Mega Breakfast, pulling faces takes precedence over writing a song that works from beginning to end. Still, there are glimpses of brilliance here: “Even Your Friend” alternates between Claire Hope’s buttoned-up sing-speaking, creepy pitch-shifted vocals that recall Ween at its goofiest, and a jarringly catchy, bracingly dumb chorus of “Kids, are you ready to go steady with the summertime love” that realizes too late that the kids might want to prepare for “a house and baby,” too. The mechanical beats and bleats of “Obviously,” with its litany of celebrity atheists, and the pizzicato and soothing coos of “You will never have a job / You will never have lunch in this town again” on “We’ll See To Your Breakdown” could be Max Tundra after losing the sunny disposition and possibly a few IQ points. The Chap is essentially a running gag set to music, but it has yet to wear thin.