Atom and His Package: Making Love

Atom and His Package
Making Love
No Idea

HOWEVER YOUNG OR old Atom Goren might be, anyone who refers to Taco Bell as a "restaurant" has his finger on the pulse of smart-assed suburban teendom. The Oreland, Pennsylvania, native with local ties revives the speedy, cartoonish punk of pre-growing-pains Bis and pre-college Descendents with a pop bounce courtesy of his cheap Yamaha sequencer, a.k.a. "The Package." Compiling a bunch of the one-man-band's seven-inch EPs, Making Love is an exhausting listen--music this unrelentingly goofy is best approached a handful of songs at a time. But a surprisingly large amount of it sticks, from the conceptual coup "It's a Mad Mad Mad Mad Mad Mad Mad Mad Lib" to the surprisingly affecting awkwardness of the rite-of-passage ditty "He Kissed Me."