Boris The Sprinkler - Vespa To Venus

It is my fervent hope that some individuals are reading this now and wondering, "Who in the hell is Boris the Sprinkler?!", which would be quickly followed by them pushing play and asking "What the fuck is this?!" Otherwise it would be totally unnecessary to say anything about the band's reunion album Vespa To Venus beyond that it sounds exactly like a Boris the Sprinkler record and that you will be either delighted or horrified by such information. But if you were living in a cave or perhaps not yet born in the 1990s, this may be your first exposure to the Midwestern punk rock institution that is Boris the Sprinkler. On that note, I would ask you to envision some unholy progeny of The Dickies, Generation X, and Rezillos if they'd been dropped on their heads repeatedly as infants and educated solely through comic books and bad sci-fi movies.

It has been 19 years since Boris the Sprinkler released its last album Gay, and the unexpected arrival of new material has caused me to reflect on how well the entire back catalog holds up at the doorstep of the '20s. If you took away Norb's shtick, puns, jokes, really stupid song titles, corny banter, and obsessions with punctuation, what's left of Boris the Sprinkler? Well that's a trick question. If you took away Norb's shtick, puns, jokes, really stupid song titles, corny banter, and obsessions with punctuation, it wouldn't be Boris the Sprinkler! But you'd still have high quality '77-style pop-punk that doesn't sound quite like any other band in existence. As soon as I heard the thumping three-chord sing-along crunch of "I Tell Ya! Tonight! Tonight!", I knew that Boris was back all the way. There are zero concessions made here to the past two (or better yet, four) decades of musical progress. Vespa To Venus arrives courtesy of Beer City Records, and it features what is considered to be the band's "classic" lineup (Norb, Paul #1, Ric Six, Paul #2). With songs ranging from the vintage '77 punk pop of "Gamma Ray Girl" to the goofball instrumental dance number "Bippy" to the glam-flavored "Rock & Roll Tangerine" to the erudite "My Cock's On Drugs", this album compares favorably with whatever Boris record is your favorite (Saucer To Saturn or Mega Anal, most likely). It's tremendous fun. As always, the band attains a highly unique mix of dorky, poppy, silly, and just plain weird. You would probably need some sort of book to understand all the references. If you're not amused, well then you were probably never amused in the first place. 

How long has it been since Boris the Sprinkler released new music? 2003? Aaron Rodgers was a first year starter at Cal, and YouTube hadn't even been thought of yet. We were all still listening to CDs. Those were the wilderness days, I'll tell you! Perhaps it's just a case of absence making the heart grow fonder. But I'm really enjoying hearing Boris the Sprinkler again, and I still concur with the past acclaim I've thrown in the direction of this band. Maybe there's nothing here quite as valuable to humankind as "Drugs and Masturbation" or "(Do You Wanna) Grilled Cheese", but I'd say Vespa to Venus easily slots as no worse than the fourth best Boris album. A decidedly above-average comeback!



 -L.R.

https://www.beercity.com/releases/boris-the-sprinkler-vespa-to-venus/ 
Vespa To Venus on YouTube