Circus Devils
Pinball Mars
2003, The Fading Captain Series
If someone puts out five albums in a year, one of them really should be a weird, druggy rock opera.
For the third Halloween in a row, the Circus Devils brought a madness that stood out next to everything else that Robert Pollard was doing. The sounds of Todd and Tim Tobias continue to be never quite of this world. You can hear their influences, sure. Devo looms large, as always. I also detect Chrome and Alice Cooper maybe blowing around in this album’s storm. The echoes come from far away, though. The signal is distorted.
Pinball Mars paints the clearest picture yet of them as 70s hard rock kids who later got warped by punk and other 80s fringe sounds and now here they are trying different ways to make it fit together. What makes them great is that they never slide into too much respect for it all. Everything is a perversion in some way. They don’t imitate their esteemed forebears. Rather, the Tobias brothers treat their influences like a mad scientist might treat a stolen corpse. Try not to slip on the blood.
Their work inspires Pollard to get extra free and absurd with his songs and the results are often crazy and amazing.
Now you might have questions.
Okay, so Pinball Mars is a rock opera. Does that mean it’s a bunch of pretentious horseshit?
NO. Pinball Mars is trashy and strange. It sounds like 70s riff rock tripping over punk on its way to prog and then getting abducted by a UFO. It’s great Ohio outsider stuff.