I continue to unironically adore Oingo Boingo well into my 30s. They have the distinction of being the third band I ever fell in love with back in my high school days. Second was They Might Be Giants. First was “Weird Al” Yankovic. That tells you all you need to know about my terminally virgin teenage years.
All these years later, and thousands more bands under my belt since, I’m still impressed with Danny Elfman’s ragtag team of weirdo new wave ska punk dark cabaret alt-rock musicians. The band’s humble beginnings trace back to 1972, when Elfman’s brother Richard founded a Los Angeles street theater group dubbed the Mystic Knights of the Oingo Boingo. It was outsider performance art in possibly the most rigid definition of the term, containing no less than 15 members at any given time playing every instrument you can image — even some invented by the band members themselves.
Time passed, the project slowly shifted into the recognizable Danny Elfman-fronted rock band that everyone who doesn’t SUCK knows and loves, and the rest is history. Their unique carnivalesque brand of new wave mania was highly influential to a diverse range of followers, including, but not limited to, Primus, Mr. Bungle, the Aquabats, Reel Big Fish, and Finnish black/folk metal outfit Finntroll.
Eventually, Danny Elfman’s burgeoning interest in scoring film music spilled over and morphed Oingo Boingo into mediocre adult contemporary pop and then little-too-late grungy alternative rock. Elfman eventually admitted that his heart wasn’t in it anymore and called it quits in 1995.
Danny Elfman’s official website
JUMP TO:
Studio Albums
(1981) Only a Lad
(1982) Nothing to Fear
(1983) Good for Your Soul
(1984) So-Lo
(1985) Dead Man’s Party
(1987) Boi-Ngo
(1990) Dark at the End of the Tunnel
(1994) Boingo
Only a Lad (1981) – Rating: 8/10
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Pretty bold to make your introductory statement on your first full-length album a pedophilia empathy anthem! But here it is, “Little Girls” is so bombastic and catchy that NAMBLA could adopt it as their organization’s theme song…except they like little boys instead. Oh darn.
There’s a loose concept of conservative satire on Only a Lad, that is to say “satire of conservatism”. At least I think it’s satire, knowing Danny’s views these days. It’s possible he thought differently as a young man. Between the socialism bashing of “Perfect System” and the free-market economy lauding of “Capitalism”, plus the death penalty advocating of “Only a Lad” and the faking your way through making it criticism of “Imposter”, it seems Danny was a Reagan voter. Be that as it might have been (I’m not here to judge anyone on their past fuck-ups), a lot of the attitude is undercut by the sheer clowniness of the music and Danny’s vocal delivery. Like a demented new wave circus, the frantic and jagged synthesizer and brass arrangements make all the social commentary sound downright self-mocking. As if the fact that there’s social commentary at all is laughably stupid!
The songs themselves are outrageously good, with only the lower-energy “What You See” and the aimless “Capitalism” considered as filler tunes. I particularly enjoy the nervous crescendos of “Perfect System”, the irregular time signatures of “Only a Lad”, the deconstructed-as-fuck fun house mirror nightmare of the “You Really Got Me” Kinks cover, and the spidery piano bridge of “Nasty Habits”. Only a Lad is Oingo Boingo at their most uninhibited, and while I wish there was another album or two of this kind of manic Hell ska sound, I can’t complain too much with the results of their next two projects.
Nothing to Fear (1982) – Rating: 9/10
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What gets me the most about Nothing to Fear is that it has the same jerky energy, the same erratic and desperate vocals, the same horn-laden, synthesizer-drenched new wave personality, and yet this is not merely Only a Lad Pt. 2. Oingo Boingo’s second album maintains everything that makes early Oingo Boingo great while still showing progress and growth. The melodies are better, the sound is fuller, and the songs are more diverse. And all within a year!
The difference is immediate. “Grey Matter” steamrolls you right away with loud, synthesized bass rhythms; loud, synthesized, airy drums; loud, frenzied, tribal marimba; loud, loud, loud. Dance punk for the insane. New wave circus music with darker production than before, guaranteed to bring out the goth clown in all of us.
There’s very little negative criticism I have for Nothing to Fear, except that “Running on a Treadmill” feels tired and by-the-book compared to everything else around it, and “Islands”, while a very faithful take on the suffocating hopelessness of your average Joy Division track, becomes an exhausting listen for me personally. Everything else ranges from great to amazing, no foolin’. The title track is one of the best and most criminally underrated songs of the early ’80s, weaving in Cold War paranoia (“The Russians are about to pulverize us in our sleep tonight“) with societal pessimism (“If they don’t take away your passion with a color TV set/They’ll take away your heart and soul“) and disturbing pedophilia (a whole, uncomfortable verse that I won’t rewrite here!). The pure cynicism and paranoia is visceral, with the dark moods enhanced by the scary punctuations of trumpet blasts.
Other major highlights include the absurdly manic “Insects”, the Cure-adjacent ode to isolation “Private Life”, the Eastern-tinged critical look at mankind’s evolution “Why’d We Come”, and the silly shout-out to both lizards and Japanese warriors alike with “Reptiles and Samurai”, closing out the record. Each track astoundingly catchy. And this isn’t even the best that Boingo has to offer!
Good for Your Soul (1983) – Rating: 10/10
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Now THIS! THIS is the best Boingo has to offer. A solid 10. I’m not even going off of my dorky teenage virgin rose-tinted glasses! I listened to Good for Your Soul a couple of times this week, and even in my jaded 30s I’m still kind of blown away by this whole album. A masterstroke of new wave punk-tinged pop, and one of the last great albums of the dwindling new wave era in general.
Good for Your Soul is an immaculate marriage of the Only a Lad mania and the Nothing to Fear maturity. And that makes sense, considering there was no break between finishing Nothing to Fear and recording tracks for this one. I hate to compare the two albums since I love each one in its own special way, but Good for Your Soul presents an uptick in consistency and diversity in mood. With a couple of exceptions, the tracks weave back and forth between the mellow and the energetic, between frenetic paranoia and emotional numbness. The pacing here is the best in Oingo Boingo’s catalogue.
Of the high-octane tunes, I have a hard time choosing among “Who Do You Want To Be?”, “Sweat”, “Dead or Alive”, and “Little Guns”. All of them are fucking excellent, and even though some of the social commentary might be trite by today’s standards, the music is irresistibly fun and catchy. “Who Do You Want To Be?” brings the deconstructed ska, “Sweat” brings the fight-or-flight panic, “Dead or Alive” brings the anxious horror life-or-death urgency, and “Little Guns” brings that oh-so-delicious Carnival in Hell vibe (with the sexiest saxophone solo you’ll find on this side of pop-punk spectrum).
The less frantic tunes bring their own lovely quirks to the table. The title track combines jaunty synths and moody synths, with themes of self-doubt and futile obsession. “Fill the Void” hypnotizes you with repeated two-tone phrases and brassy bursts, sort of like the Police meets Wall of Voodoo, chugging along without too many major departures in four minutes. It provides an enjoyable, low-key break near the center of the album. The best one of all, “Nothing Bad Ever Happens To Me”, entwines these steady, emotionless, robotic synth notes while Elfman sings the most straightforward lyrics yet. Each verse a retelling of misfortunes plaguing those around him (a house burglary, a boss laying off a loyal employee, a neighbor’s teenage suicide) while the narrator punctuates each verse with the final line “And I can’t believe that anyone would wanna do such a terrible thing/But why should I caaaaaarrrrrrre?” Complete ambivalence. No learning, no self-awareness, no empathy, no remorse. Just the way I like it.
The rest of the tracks ain’t no slouches either. I consider “No Spill Blood” and “Cry of the Vatos” thematically similar to each other, kinda poking fun at the worldbeat fad at the time. “Wake Up (It’s 1984)” is a timely comment on government encroachment with delicious hooks. And “Pictures of You”, while the weakest track on the record, sounds like the Cure before the Cure even WROTE a song called “Pictures of You”! How about them apples, huh?
Fantastic stuff. One of the best new wave albums of all time. Don’t sleep on it.
So-Lo (1984) – Rating: 7/10
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The “lost album”. A Danny Elfman solo album in name only, this is every bit of an Oingo Boingo album as any other Oingo Boingo album. As such, I’m calling it an Oingo Boingo album. All nine band members are on this thing, for fuck’s sake. Elfman was offered a solo contract from MCA Recrods after their old label dropped them. He took it as an opportunity to de-Boingofy the music a little bit and play around with slower tempos and different sound palettes. So-Lo is the most overtly dated-sounding record, filled to the brim with schmaltzy, over-synthesized tastelessness. Luckily, the melodies are strong enough to make up for that.
Par exemple, the first few bars of the opener “Gratitude” sound like a robot playing an organ through PVC piping. Once the guitar tones kick in, though, it’s unmistakably Boingo. The signature sound pushes past all the synthesizer hell, and what a tune “Gratitude” is anyway! Hooks! Hooks upon hooks! Oh my god, dude, try to get that chorus out of your head. “In the middle of a big tornado/On the tip of everyone’s tongue/In the belly of a giant whale/All the girls just want to have fun“. Pop artists would kill to have a melody like that.
No real slouches on So-Lo musically (except maybe “Go Away”, which is cloyingly miserable), but most of the issues are with the lyrics and the attitude. “Cool City” is catchy as hell, but everything else about it is completely lame. You got Elfman singing with weenie-guy machismo about “The blacks they all hate the whites/COOOOOOOL CITY/The whites think they’re tough but they’re not/COOOOOOOL CITY” like he’s your resident expert on… whatever the fuck it’s supposed to be. “It Only Makes Me Laugh” is a slightly embarrassing take on 2 tone ska with too much accidental posturing, but, again, the melody reigns supreme. I just can’t sit here and call it a bad song when something is so impossibly hooky. But then you have “Sucker for Mystery”, which does have a weak melody bolstered by repetition, and “Everybody Needs”, which closes the album on a musically dour note that isn’t particularly memorable. Each has its moments though, like the snakey synths on the former and the (synthetic?) dirgy accordion on the latter. Where there’s the bad, there’s always the good.
“Lightning” is the best track. Carrying that old energy and paranoia into the new sound was very effective, and if there were just even three or four more similarly tonal tracks then So-Lo would easily fall in line with the first three albums. I still love this record unconditionally, but the flaws are starting to get harder to hide.
Dead Man’s Party (1985) – Rating: 5/10
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The album that pigeonholed Oingo Boingo as a Halloween band. Skeletons on the art, songs about dead people and science that may or may not be weird, an October 28th release date. What the fuck else was going to happen, stupid?
Dead Man’s Party was Oingo Boingo’s most commercially successful record. It marks the transition between hyperactive schizo-ska and croony pop, and although you have some old strangeness like “Weird Science” or pop with an experimental bent like “No One Lives Forever”, this is pretty much a step in the wrong direction.
I have a huge problem with this record, and it ain’t the stylistic transition. By and large, this is the worst sounding Oingo Boingo recording that has been officially released. Never has the energy of the band been so restrained by such flatness in the sound. The title track, for example, lacks exactly the kind of urgency that would make it a smash hit in the old days. Don’t get me wrong, “Dead Man’s Party” is probably Oingo Boingo’s second-most known track, but this could have been so much better than the six-minute dredge through the audio swamp that it is. And I can say that for every other song on the album. “Stay” has incredible atmospheric potential ruined by the fuzziness of a fucking blown speaker. “No One Lives Forever” — can you imagine this track without piss-poor production? I’m salivating at the thought, but it shall never be.
The next major problem with the record is the filler. Oh god, the filler. “Heard Somebody Cry”, “Fool’s Paradise”, “Help Me”, and “Same Man I Was Before” are all filler. That’s 4 out of 9 tracks! I mean, Jesus, what the fuck is even happening here?
What Oingo Boingo should’ve done was hang onto the five good tracks, piggyback on Boi-Ngo‘s six great tracks, and made a killer album with excellent production.
But they didn’t. 5/10.
Boi-Ngo (1987) – Rating: 7/10
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The old erratic Oingo Boingo is dead and buried, but the death rattle persists. Luckily, before the flames go out completely, Elfman and his clan have one more good album left in them. Boi-Ngo might be completely different, it might be somewhat unrecognizable, and it may even be overly sappy and corny at times (ahem *cough* “We Close Our Eyes”), but it’s hard to say that any song on here is objectively bad. Quite the contrary! Some of it even downright rocks!
OK, fine, saying something from Oingo Boingo “rocks” is pushing it. But the energy that was absent from Dead Man’s Party finds itself flowing through Boi-Ngo in spades. “Home Again”, “Where Do All My Friends Go?”, and “Elevator Man” is a great run of tracks to open with. The pianos and horns reverberate with vivacity! The corny ’80s synths are punchy and hard-hitting! The rhythms are infectious and groovy! Oh my god, those rhythms! Danny’s voice has never sounded more versatile; he croons and he belts! Who cares if “Elevator Man” is a four-minute oral sex joke? That horn melody is immaculate!
The highs aren’t as high after the first three tracks, but there’s plenty of good to mine from songs like “Outrageous”, which captures that same spirit of the early days with a more subdued approach. Or “Pain”, which gives you a surprise jaunty fiddle melody during the bridge. Even “New Generation”, which overstays its welcome, is somewhat bolstered by a cool repeated echoing trumpet arpeggio. In the past, the seriousness of songs like “New Generation” were undercut by manic ska rhythms or Danny’s exaggerated vocal delivery. Here, it’s just too serious for its own good. Just like “Not My Slave” or “My Life”. The old Boingo humor is missing!
Give me some humor and this is an easy 8 or 9, but Oingo Boingo isn’t funny anymore, guys. You’re just going to have to live with that from now on.
Dark at the End of the Tunnel (1990) – Rating: 3/10
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What a complete stinker. Danny’s full transition into film score work got the best of him. If there was any evidence that his heart wasn’t in the Oingo Boingo project by 1990, it’s Dark at the End of the Tunnel. A fitting title with what might have, and could very well have been in another universe, the final swan song. It’s pitiful and it sucks. And it’s a complete waste of genius.
First of all, what made Oingo Boingo an original band is gone completely by now. Disappointingly, the sound veers heavily toward the adult contemporary side of 1990 than it does toward any sort of underground counterculture side. Safe, easily digestible tonal textures abound. “Scary” songs like “When the Lights Go Out” and “Skin” are nothing more than mellow, fey pop songs with subject matter that “Nothing to Fear (But Fear Itself)” and “Private Life”, respectively, already captured perfectly eight years earlier. “Out of Control” is a miserably vapid ballad with an embarrassingly saccharine melody and message that makes me feel uncomfortable just listening to it. And not uncomfortable in the old, good way. This stuff doesn’t seem self-aware anymore. It sounds like it’s trying really hard to hit the charts which, in the abysmal year for the pop music sound of 1990, is quite upsetting.
Yuck, and the cloying metallophone percussion on tracks like “Flesh ‘N Blood” or “Dream Somehow” are childish and emotionless, backboned by these safe, major-key melodies with tacky lyrics. “I’m not gonna give up the ghost/No, I’m not gonna give it up/’Cause I haven’t the strength/To hold out too long/If we both hold on together/We can make each other strong” Give me a fucking break.
Is there any good? Well, “Run Away (The Escape Song)” is honestly catchy and fun and, even though the synthesized pan flute is corny, the sexy saxophone makes up for it. I also don’t mind the closer “Try to Believe” because it’s an earnest (and successful) attempt at southern gospel and, as it turns out, Danny’s voice is perfect for it.
Other than that, though, there really isn’t much to write home about. A competent set of tunes that are completely devoid of urgency and lasting power. You have no reason to listen to this.
Boingo (1994) – Rating: 6/10
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I call this a 7 on a good day, but with seven out of eleven songs blowing past the 5-minute mark (egregiously, in a few cases), you can’t blame me for underrating this, as good as the music might be. I know that this was purposely meant to be the last hurrah, but bloat is bloat, after all.
Busy as it is, a lot of this album is really good, though. Boingo abandoned everything they were ever known for and put out a little-too-late alternative grunge album laced with ’60s psychedelia for good measure. Fine by me, this was a totally unexpected and perfectly solid effort. Hell, it’s the most timeless Oingo Boingo album ever! Even in 2024! Spin this one in your drunk friend Dylan’s living room and he may bang his head to “War Again” if you wake him up first.
You do have to give these songs room to grow on you, though. “Insanity”, the opener, is an immediate winner, and probably the only example of Danny Elfman perfecting social commentary without needing humor to back it up. And hey, we finally get a taste of the kind of cinematic, epic music from Danny’s scoring career on a proper Oingo Boingo album! In fact, I’d be so bold as to put “Insanity” in the Top 5 Boingo Songs Ever. You heard it here first, but probably not.
Special mention also goes to the mammoth 16-minute psychedelic Beatles send-off of “Change”, with not a second wasted with filler. OK, maybe some of it is wasted with filler, but I don’t care. This overwrought exercise of flower power-era druggy noise, faux British melancholic whimsy, and dinner party sound effects (complete with laughter and clinking glasses and, oh yes, a story about going to South America with Richard Nixon!) is utterly captivating and, ultimately, pointless of course. But it’s all in good fun, and it’s a pretty satisfying end to a career, wouldn’t you say?
All the stuff between “Insanity” and “Change” don’t give me quite the same highs, but almost all of it is worth listening to. The ghost of Kurt Cobain comes through on “Hey!” while the future ghost of Paul McCartney comes through on “Mary”. “Can’t See (Useless)” expresses vulnerability through some gorgeous string arrangements. Then you’ve got four middling songs in a row: “Pedestrian Wolves” is extremely overlong and stupid, profoundly skippable by its very nature of existing. “Lost Like This” has a slow groove with a lot of its impact muddied by the production. “Spider” is pretty, sure, but forgettable as shit. The aforementioned “War Again” has no distinct melody other than the “yea-yeaahhh, yea-yeahhh” hook, but I enjoy the hazy guitar work if not for the slightly uninspired lyrics (“Don’t you know this is better than any video, friend/It’s an action movie“).
Finally? Well, the cover of “I Am the Walrus” of course! Faithful to the original to a fault, with more emphasis on heaviness, but it fits nicely on an album inspired partly by the Fab Four. Oh yeah, there’s “Tender Lumplings” too, but I don’t understand the point of the 37-second interlude. Forget I even mentioned it!
But, yeah, a 6. You could easily, easily, trim 25 minutes off of this thing and it would be a masterpiece of an album. A band going out with a bang in a completely different genre, no less! But Danny wanted to make everything eight minutes long and here we are. 7 on a good day, though! I mean it!
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