Bed-Stuy is a funny place to live.  I feel like we belong in a lot of ways, but we obviously stick out in others.  One thing I’m having trouble with is how it’s next to impossible to buy anything without a bunch of unnecessary crap in it.  It’s a struggle to find unsalted butter, unbleached flour, or even refried beans without added lard.  But on the other hand, we have easy access to sweet potato cheesecake and other essential carbohydrates.  I think we just need to convince all our whitey friends to move here too, so that there will be a bigger demand for our hippy food.

I just found out that Jeremy Enigk is coming to The Bowery Ballroom on August 11, and I’ve decided to make it my personal crusade to ensure that everyone goes.  Or at the very least, to ensure that you are made aware so that you can make a well-informed decision.  We’ve been waiting for a follow-up to his solo debut for 10 years now, so I’m guessing if you miss this tour, that might be it.  I’m not sure where you can hear his stuff for free, but I’ll give you a list of my top 5 essential Enigk tracks, for those of you internet-savvy conscience-free music fans who don’t mind downloading illegally (like me).

1. Explain (from “Return Of The Frog Queen”)
2. The Ocean (from Sunny Day Real Estate’s “The Rising Tide”)
3. It’s Over (from The Fire Theft’s self-titled CD)
4. Ballroom Blitz (from The United States Of Leland soundtrack)
5. Guitar And Video Games (from Sunny Day Real Estate’s “How It Feels To Be Something On”)

An incomplete list at best, yes, I know.  Still, you should really check out this show, like your life depended on it, because it just might.  Though it probably won’t.

With all of Mike Patton’s various projects, you get a good dose of innovation within familiar art forms, delivered with an avante garde twist.  In a sense, the surprises are expected, but still satisfying.  With Peeping Tom, he opts for a decidedly more straight-forward approach, trading in the over-the-top conceptual dedication of Mr. Bungle and the sheer mathematical hysteria of Fantomas, for much more predictable hip-hop and techno-inspired collaborations with a number of notable guest musicians.

The payoff is spectacular on more inspired tracks, like the opener “Five Seconds,” alternating between densely layered beats and moody, ambient octave-doubled vocals that carry the verse, and a frenetic, polyrhythmic chorus, which eventually propels the song into a brief, paranoid noise breakdown of a bridge.  Other songs fall a little flat, like the monotonous drone of “Getaway,” or “Sucker”s somewhat bland duet with a foul-mouthed Norah Jones.

All in all, the risk pays off.  Given total creative control with his own record label, it’s refreshing to see Patton challenging himself with such rigid structures, though one can’t help wishing he would cut loose a little more.  The chorus of “Don’t Even Trip,” for instance, chopping and dissecting the pulse into an anxious 11/8, only reminds you of the potential of Patton’s bizarre mind, the delivery falling short of some of the more out-there experiments of Tomahawk and the aforementioned Fantomas.  It’s always great to hear him breathing new life into a somewhat tired genre, though with this release, it feels like he underestimated his audience just a little.