Puerile cabaret-rock that lurches around the dancefloor like an inbred eight year old drunk on moonshine, The Grinning Corpse Who Went to Town is an inside joke riposte to outsider music. The Bitter Tears themselves call it “f*cked-up folk,” which is at least half-right. Too smart and self-aware to qualify for official key-of-Z status, the record is also much too over the top to pass for folk. The songs draw on source material as diverse as ’70s cop shows (“The Marriage Hole”), sea shanties (“Murdered at the Bar”), and even children’s lullabies (“Grieving”), complete with woozy, bloated arrangements stuffed with so many instruments you’ll swear these guys mugged a high school marching band. There’s a certain perverse charm to the Bitter Tears’ weird-beard shenanigans, but more often than not The Grinning Corpse Who Went to Town substitutes eccentricity for entertainment. It’s more admirable than listenable. – Jason Ankeny
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