As you might expect from a group of people that have to hang out in a tiny office together for long periods of time, The Squelch staff tends to go through a lot of music. One could even say that the Squelch has its own music history. Former editors like to recall how wherever they went and whatever they were doing, somehow the topic of Belle & Sebastian would come up. Bad 80’s pop has also long been a favorite (when I took over the office there were more copies of Duran Duran in there than there were backup discs).

This is all a very roundabout way of saying I’ve become obsessed with something. Get Away from Me, the 2004 debut album from Nellie McKay.

Let’s recap the reasons to dislike Nellie McKay since you probably don’t know them. She’s 24 yet constantly lies about her age, she was born in England, stayed there for only one year, grew up in New York, and moved to Washington, yet she switches between English and German accents in many of her songs. She’s written songs in support of PETA protests and a love song to Ralph Nader. She’s friends with KD Lang. Her music videos are pretentious camera shots of her drinking tea in fast motion, and she titled her debut album around an uninteresting joke making fun of a Macy Gray album. Also, she switches between rap and jazz with piano played underneath both. She once demanded an album be released on two CDs because she wanted people to have to change discs ala a record player.

Despite all this, she’s insanely fantastic. Her album is wonderful. It’s got 18 fucking songs on it. Many of them are great, all of them are listenable, and some are actually genuinely funny. I could definitely imagine someone finding it all very pretentious and over-produced. In fact, most reviews I’ve read seem to fall into the category of "Blah blah she’s cute but blah blah where’s the depth and blah blah this is nice but…" Really though, the album is just good fun. It’s got songs for every mood, and several of the goofy rap songs create an excellent environment for fast-paced comedy writing.

Apparently she does have a follow-up album but it’s been delayed for two years because she refused to release it with anything short of 23(!!) tracks and the record label refused to budge from 16. A girl to watch, most certainly.