Consumer Guide Album

Handsome Boy Modeling School: White People [Atlantic, 2004]
Not the better class of white people, I'm afraid, although Paul and Dan manage to ground lounge-and-proud Chan Marshall, Julee Cruise, and Jamie Cullen more firmly than usual after feckless rocker Mike Patton gets away from them. Instead, what carries the album is, I swear, the skits--Guido Sarducci and Tim Meadows turn out to be as replayable as Posdnuos and Trugoy. Suitably, the very best of these, Meadows's "Knockers" ("Oh, wait one second, my illegitimate son is here"), climaxes the multipartite tour de force "Rock and Roll (Could Never Hip Hop Like This) Part 2," the sole occasion when the perfectly interesting rock tracks hip hop enough. The hip hop, fortunately, hip hops plenty. B+