Shake Your Piggy Bank - Wesley Willis

One of the last albums Wesley Willis completed before his career was cut short by the illness that would eventually kill him, 2001's Shake Your Piggy Bank is a collaboration with the new wave-ish Dragnews, meaning that it's a bit more accessibly "musical" than his a-man-and-his-Casio recordings. Not by much, however, as each of these 25 songs follows the same familiar premise: a bit of herky-jerky spoken word stuff followed by about two-and-a-half minutes of repeated, obsessive screaming of a single phrase. This time out, the style is so locked into place that every song is musically almost identical, right down to the fact that all 25 songs are between 2:48 and 2:54 in length. Similar themes reappear in the songs as well, with one subset "about" famous punk rock stars, and another with titles and choruses like "Lick My Doberman's Cock" and "Suck a Jackrabbit's Ass." Dull, phoned-in records like this only prove that Wesley Willis was the Wild Man Fischer of the indie generation, only less endearing and with an even higher "Hey, lookit the freak!" quotient. ~ Stewart Mason, All Music Guide