Homespun: Superfun Yeah Yeah Rocketship

Corey Goodman, the brain behind one-man-band Superfun Yeah Yeah Rocketship, has referred to his act as "electro-comedy," which is as good a term as any to describe the white-boy raps and discount beats he produces. His sweaty, in-your-face concert appearances are as much a display of performance art as they are a musical experience. The release of Chest Hairposes a kind of Zen riddle: Is it really a Superfun experience if Goodman isn't jumping around in running shorts and sweatbands? Yes and no — the songs are funny (at least for the first few listens), but Superfun is still best experienced as a good-humored dose of confrontainment.

Goodman lays out his mission statement on "Superfun 101," the first track. With typical bravado, Goodman boasts that he's "the most amazing thing you've ever seen/I play some keyboards and a drum machine." The rhymes don't get much more complicated than that, and the canned beats and preset synth sounds are strictly fundamental. Lyrically, Superfun Yeah Yeah Rocketship is a product of the Internet age: "Image Content," about the vanity of MySpace pages, threatens the listener with rejected friend requests, and "Restart My Heart (Ctrl+Alt+Delete)" samples noises from Microsoft Windows' operating system and AOL Instant Messenger to propel a computer-love lament. Maybe Goodman is making a comment about the disconnection that occurs when technology takes over our lives, but that seems unlikely. Such heaviness would dull the off-the-cuff fun of these songs.

Goodman does most other joke-rappers one better by possessing a magnetic voice that, while not tonally perfect, contains no small amount of charm or personality. The smart money is on Goodman ditching the electro-clash racket and starting a rockabilly band; his shouts and sneers make him an ideal frontman, and if he'd sing about crashing hot rods instead of crashed computers, he could have this city's dirt-rockers in his pocket. Chest Hair is offered in full as a free download from Superfun's MySpace page (www.myspace.com/superfunyeahyeahrocketship).

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