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THE LAPTOP EP
(Sidecho)
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Any towheaded, twentysomething, Stanford-educated, Swedish-American lap-top hip-hopper who samples Piebald is all right by me. Cali’s MC Lars wrote most of the songs on his debut EP in his dorm room. And the lyrics brand him as just the sort of Gen-Y hipster cut-and-paste polymath you might suspect someone with a bio sheet like his would be. Blogging and NetFlix, Bob Dylan and Paris Hilton, Seymour Skinner and Shawn Fanning — they’re all here. But lest you think this is all just some vapid post-ironic pop-culture name-checkin’ goof, check out the electrocuted Scorpions riffs on "Hurricane Fresh," or the glitches and skittering scribbles on "Stat-60." This dude knows his way around a Powerbook. In fact, the EPs apotheosis is "iGeneration," which lifts the anthemic chorus ("Hey! You’re part of it!") from Piebald’s "American Heart," turning it into a rousing rallying cry for the plugged-in youth of America — "the iMac, iPod, iGeneration." Most scarifying of all, in "Mr. Raven," Lars does the best (all right, only) hip-hop send-up of Edgar Allan Poe’s spooky story I’ve heard. The black bird is, "All up in my grill like, ‘Nevermore.’ " As the milk-fed poet himself later proclaims, "My Grandma says I have rhyme talent, and I love her." If you don’t believe me, believe her. (MC Lars opens for Bowling for Soup, American Hi-Fi, and Riddlin’ Kids tonight, April 7, at Avalon, 15 Lansdowne Street in Boston; call 617-423-NEXT.)
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