Breakfast is great. More specifically, breakfast is the one meal of the day when you can get away with eating cookies and candy as a meal. Sugary cereal. Donuts. Pastries. A handful of Chips Ahoy (which the cereal industry made perfectly justifiable for breakfast via cereals like Cookie Crisp). These can all, in their own way, be part of a (maybe not so) balanced breakfast. (Yes, yes, healthy stuff is sometimes good too — but life is short and Cookie Crisp tastes damn good sometimes.)
The same can be said for music: There's some seriously deep stuff out there that can move you and stimulate your brain and leave you a better person for taking on the task of listening. And then here's stuff that's just instantly satisfying in its tastiness. Champions of Breakfast fall in that latter category. On the long-admired local duo's debut album, Pleasure Mountain, Moses Jackson and Val Hundreds serve up a hearty dose of sugary delight for your ears.
Champions of Breakfast are best known for their well-crafted and exceptionally fun live show. Using huge fake instruments and fully embracing cheesy spectacle, these two very talented guys make fun of — and at the same time pay homage to — those who've come before them. And they do it in a way that's both genre-effacing and -embracing.
Pleasure Mountain demonstrates that their material is strong enough to entertain, even outside of their live performances. Their music might be fun and, at times, exceptionally silly, but it's also intelligently done. And they're never shy about laying their nerd cards on the table. "When Trolls Roamed the Earth" harks back to the days of the ridiculously over-the-top genre of late '70s prog rock and metal, while "Unicorn Bible" comes across as an unashamed kinky nod to role playing games ("I will wear my steel plated teddy, if you wear your chainmail bra ..."). It's pure, talent-fortified, geeky fun. So no matter what your doctor says about your insulin levels these days, your ears (and your brain) deserve an occasional candy-coated trip and Pleasure Mountain is a perfect destination.
