Lounge Against The Machine is Richard Cheese's debut album, which was released in 2000.
Right from the first album, there's a great amount of comedy and re-arrangement talent to enjoy, but some songs on this album suffer from low-rent production values. Nookie / Break Stuff works great as a lounge parody, but is undermined by some awful sounding drums (although I really enjoy the Chatanooga Choo Choo joke at the end).
It's a similar story for Guerilla Radio and Bullet The Blue Sky. The cover of Creep is well executed (particularly the wonderfully terrible Radiohead puns at the start) but this is one of few times where I prefer serious emotion (i.e. Frank Bennett's wonderful version) to the tongue-in-cheek of Richard Cheese. The lyrics for Closer make for a hilarious jazz cover, but the big-band version from Sunny Side Of The Moon has more musical depth.
The laid-back style- with xylophone- of Come Out And Play works brilliantly with the lyrics. As does the comically overdone climax. At the other end of the scale, Nirvana's dark and disturbed lyrics of Rape Me make for a ridiculous contrast to the bouncing latin-jazz style of Richard Cheese's version. It's very cringeworthy, and doesn't pretend to be anything else.
The immature and lite-rebellion lyrics of What's My Age Again and Fight For Your Right have been my favourite aspect of these songs' original version. So these covers which further magnify the silliness are a guaranteed success.
Wrong Way doesn't work for me. Maybe because I enjoy the original on an emotional level. So a version in this style seems a bit... ahem... wrong. But maybe that's the joke? However, Holiday in Cambodia is a different story. Somehow I enjoy both the vehemence of the original and the non-sequitur comedy of this cover. Both versions are brilliant in their own way.
Suck My Kiss is over before you know it. And I think that's the secret to Richard Cheese's comedy- quitting while you're ahead before the joke grows tired.
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