But the Dummies (the Crashers?) still have singer-songwriter Brad Roberts’s deep, morose Canadian-accented voice (surprising in a band whose alienated-sounding name seems to promise another alternative-rock ranter), his fleet acoustic-guitar rhythms, his funky electric guitar and his off-off-center sensibility. in the title cut, God’s newly created people ask him such questions as, “If your eye got poked out in this life/Would it be waiting up in heaven with your wife?” “What if the artists ran the TV?” Roberts speculates in another song. ‘All the ads would be for fine scotch whiskey:/Glenfiddich, Glenlivet, the whole single-malt family." One source of his whimsy is clear from this couplet: “If I were David Byrne/I’d go to galleries and not be too concerned.” (Former Talking Head Jerry Harrison produced the album.) But it’s far from the whole story. Roberts is a true original; so what if he can’t make up a band name?
