Albums by this artist

Making Love (1999)

Atom And His Package

Making Love

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» MARK T.R. DONOHUE | STAFF WRITER

Atom And His Package Making Love No Idea, 1999 RiYL: They Might Be Giants, Bobby Conn, Wesley Willis

There isn't too much left to be said about Atom And His Package. It's a guy and a sequencer, who play cute, humorous punk-derived pop songs about random crap. Either you get the joke, or you don't. Instead of recounting all the funny lines on Making Love, as hundreds of other reviewers have already done, I'll try and explain why I get the joke, and why I think Atom (and his sequencer, the package) is not only funny but pretty much necessary. Okay, deep breath. Ready? Here we go.

Punk sucks. Punk has sucked for years, and nothing short of a miraculous 180-degree turn on the part of its scenesters could ever make it stop sucking. It's insular, holier-than-thou, absolutely devoid of growth, and stupid. A music that was once a celebration of individuality and rebellion from the supposed conformity that major-label rock offered has become in all senses exactly what it once set out to destroy. "Innovation" in punk is today impossible. If a band like Television, or Suicide, or Talking Heads, or any number of the great punk-identified bands of the '70s showed up at one of today's "punk" shows, they'd probably be beaten to death by a mob of dittohead zombies. Punk sucks.

Atom, bravely, is trying to do something new while still identifying himself as a punk kid. The kneejerk reactions of the sucky punk mafia -- Maximumrocknroll won't review his records, people paid to put a "Fuck Atom" ad in Heartattack, his web site quotes someone as saying "You know the state of hardcore is sad when Atom And His Package is popular" -- are not only proof of how complacent the punk scene has become, they also make it clear that if punk is ever to stop sucking, it needs more Atoms.

I'm not trying to say that "Avenger" (Atom builds big crane to pick up people he doesn't like and put them far, far away), "Head Of SEPTA, Nose Of Me" (Atom injures self leaving subway), and "(Lord, It's Hard To Be Happy When You're Not) Using The Metric System" (pretty much self-explanatory) are punk landmarks on par with Blank Generation or Marquee Moon. I'm just saying if there's ever going to be landmark punk again, then people are going to have to learn to appreciate Atom And His Package.

Until then, punk sucks.

MARK T.R. DONOHUE | Mark T.R. Donohue is a prolific freelance writer whose areas of expertise include Rockies baseball, video games, genre television, English soccer, and pub rock. He lives in Colorado, where he cultivates the largest and creepiest private collection of Alyson Hannigan memorabilia in the Mountain West.