"Shut up, You Fucking Baby!", David Cross
Sub Pop 2002 ,Chris Asbestos

I may not be the most qualified to review this, since I unfortunately have yet to see "Mr. Show" (though I certainly want to do so after having listened to this). In fact, my exposure to David Cross has more or less been limited to a few talk show appearances and guest spots in films and on sitcoms (a classic "Newsradio" episode comes to mind, where he played one of Dave Foley's college barbershop quartet members). At any rate, this double-album is a great surprise, an intelligently written comedy record that doesn't succumb to the kind of well-I-don't-really-want-to-listen-to-this-anymore silliness that mars a lot of efforts: you can't help but get the feeling Cross was aware of the skepticism with which a lot of us approach comedy albums, since he gave the tracks totally irrelevant and completely on-the-money titles that mock bad comedy album conventions, i.e. "Lunch With Frankenstein," "Phone Call From A Cranky Terrorist," and "Monica Lewinsky And The Three Bears."

A lot of the time, Cross' material has an off-the-cuff feel; a lot of what he relates are anecdotes that happened to him, and he manages to pull off this freeform, comedy-from-a-personal-perspective act without making things seem too self-indulgent (there isn't any of the preaching-to-the-converted hipsterism here that you get from one cynical comedian making fun of popular culture to an audience who knows exactly what to expect), calculated or falsely spontaneous. The second disc, meanwhile, tends to deal with the well-worn territory of politics and religion, but Cross manages to convey the absurdity of our contemporary culture in a fresh and, thankfully, hilarious way. In between, we get lots of digressions, on topics ranging from the misuse of the word "literally" to nightmarish experiences on morning zoo shows to reminiscences of youth in Georgia.

Of course, I don't really want to give any of the jokes away, but this album is a consistent and very well-done landmark of the genre. Fans of "Mr. Show" and the like probably don't need to receive a recommendation that they hear it, but anyone else definitely should.