‘The Beard Album’ is the fourth album from Beard-themed Australian band The Beards, whose previous albums include ‘Having A Beard Is The New Not Having A Beard’ and contains the recent lead-off single, ‘All The Bearded Ladies’. If you thought that sentence was wacky, annoying and contained far too many instances of the word ‘Beard’ then we highly recommend you steer clear of this record.
The antipodean success of ‘the world’s premier beard-related band’ – ARIA nominations and a sold-out 46-date tour – serves as proof that not only is the stereotype about Australians drinking too much clearly true, but that as a globalised society we have a moral obligation to stage an intervention. The band’s members go by stage names like ‘John Beardman JR’ and ‘Facey McStubblington’ and the whole enterprise is the sonic equivalent of a light-up novelty Rudolph tie. Vaguely amusing for a few seconds before rapidly descending to rage-inducing irritation.
Don’t think we’re being unfair on this album because it’s not ‘serious’ or PUNX enough, either. Acts such as Tim Minchin and Flight of the Conchords (what is it about Australasia?) have proven that comedy songs can be good; it’s not enough, though, to just be ‘comedy’. You’ve actually got to be funny, or at least musically interesting. The lack of variety in Minchin’s music is more than made up for by the laugh-out-loud lyrical content. Flight of the Conchords married Oscar-winning musical proficiency with impeccable comic timing.
The problem here is that The Beards commit the cardinal sin of mating middling music with the kind of lyrics one might find briefly funny if improvised at the end of the night by a drunkard in the queue at a kebab shop. The comedy highlight – and I’m using the word ‘comedy’ advisedly here, as one might do when speaking about the work of Mrs Brown’s Boys, Miranda Hart or your local root canal specialist – is the eponymous lyric of the song ‘There’s A Bearded Man Inside Me’. Geddit? It sounds a bit gay! COMEDY!
More of us than would admit it have tweeted, upon arrival in a new city, something like ‘Manchester, I’m inside you.’ On a comedic level, this album is that tweet extended to twelve entire songs. On a musical level it veers between pastiche balladry, pastiche rock and pastiche synth-pop without doing any of it particularly badly or particularly well. The kindest thing we can say about this album is that it truly commits to its mediocrity. There are far worse albums out there and if an entire record about facial hair sounds like it might be up your street then you can listen to the entire thing on Soundcloud. But like an alcohol-saturated aftershave, this album comes with a warning: may cause irritation.
ROB BARBOUR