ALBUM REVIEW

Nat “Clean” Coal

Unsustainable

Coal miner turned crooner Nat “Clean” Coal’s anthracite-smooth ballads address the coal industry’s claims that new technologies can render coal a “greener” source of energy.

He begins the album with “The Bituminous Song,” which is sure to be a holiday classic:

Black coal roasting on an open fire

Sulfur dioxide nipping at your nose

CO2 being captured and stored

Unless to the ozone layer it goes

Everybody knows

A turkey

Of a policy

Can’t be made to come out right

Tiny tots with a fossil fuel glow

Will find it hard to sleep tonight

Accompanied by a lush orchestra and trace amounts of mercury, Nat “Clean” Coal sings about capturing and storing carbon dioxide using a simple chemical compound in “Ammonia Lisa”:

Ammonia Lisa, Ammonia Lisa

You’re unproven

Will you join the industry with its mystic waste

Including nitrogen oxides, particulate emissions, radioactive

  isotopes and the 2008 Kingston Fossil Plant coal fly ash slurry spill

Finally, Nat “Clean” Coal sums everything up in the title track, which he also performs as a duet with his daughter, Natalie “Clean” Coal. In it, to a slow, languorous beat, he speaks directly to “clean” coal itself:

Unsustainable

That’s what you are

Unsustainable

You’re just PR

That’s why it’s incredible

That something so forgettable

Is so unsustainable, too

– Dr. Lester S. Carboni

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The Recalls

I see you driving down the street

In your car or truck

Your brakes don’t work

Your gas pedal is stu - uh uh, uh - uck

Here it comes again

Unwanted acceleration under the starry skies

Here it comes again

The CEO’s going to apologize

My best friend’s Toyotas

My best friend’s Toyotas

My best friend’s Toyotas

They used to not suck

(The gas pedal’s still…stuck)

– “My Best Friend’s Toyotas”

The Recalls are a new hybrid of two new automotive genres, Japanese decline and American malaise. Whereas previous artists such as Chuck Berry and Bruce Springsteen celebrated the romance of the automobile and the call of the open road, the Recalls sing of faulty electronics systems and sticky floor mats.

Songs include “Let the Complaints Roll,” “Bye Bye Lexus,” “You’re All I’ve Killed Tonight,” “Just What I Bleeded” and “I’m in Touch With Your Customer Relations Department.”

This is the Recalls’ first CD and also their last, because all CDs have been recalled as well as the Recalls themselves.

A spokesman for the group said, “You have my personal commitment that we will work vigorously and unceasingly to restore the trust of the people we have the most contempt for. I mean, our customers.”

– Dr. Lester S. Carboni

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