CD Review
Myq Kaplan: Meat Robot
4 stars (out of 5)
Myq Kaplan throws more at you than an overstaffed cocktail hour on his newest album, Meat Robot. Subjects include mermaid and werewolf weddings, grammar grandmas, and the correlation between veganism and racist robotic engineers. If a particular joke isn’t for you just wait nine seconds and Kaplan will transmogrify it into something else. He splices his personality for a joke called “Fight Club,” bewitches Harry potter with a creepy pun, and fervently refutes the merit of the needle in a hay stack cliché.
Some jokes are fueled by a clever thought association, some pinball through pop culture references, many normal topics like the widespread use of pornography are summed up in quick witticisms (Wit is “Mmmm” as Kaplan might say) that could serve as a cultural book end for the topic. Kaplan puns memorably on lots of regular contemporary grounds…Musing the embarrassingly trendy topic of necrophilia, (which no one seems ready to let go of) Kaplan suggest “mortician for the squishin’,” a cringe-inducing example of his pun-manship, without revealing his most masterful quips here.
Track titles which illustrate the absurdity of the topic selection and flow include “Poops and Popes”, “Meats and Robots” “Axes and Brains” and “Porn and Monsters.” Surprisingly, these topics are transitioned in as close to seamless fashion as imaginable and the set is not a Mitch Hedberg-esque one-liner parade, but is tied together with likable sensibilities that can best be summed up as having a degree of civility.
A trustworthy ethos emerges from the mania of bursting and morphing jokes. While much of the set takes place in a silly, relaxed realm, it becomes apparent Kaplan is adeptly carving through the rapids towards the realization that in today’s world, calmness and clarity are not synonymous with stillness. Charged with the vigor of a chaotic inspiration Kaplan presents a type of calamitous order, bombarding himself with semi-serious questions of the time and disarming them with a cheeky intelligence.
