Send "David Cross " Ringtones to your Cell 
| Pitchfork |
 David Cross gets too much crap. All that grief he got for appearing in two Alvin and the Chipmunks movies? Hell, having The Squeakquel on the same IMDB page as Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind means getting paid and having one of the weirdest résumés since Raul Julia. It also means that for all his reputation as an edgy, confrontational crank, he's still got enough versatility to switch to lighthearted family fare and back. And if you go back to his previous two CDs, Shut Up, You Fucking Baby! and It's Not Funny, you might be able to catch the absurd undercurrent that allows him to run that kid-friendly/shock comedy range. Those were polarizing sets, ones where detractors claimed he came across like a pompous, arrogant know-it-all. But that onstage persona worked because he made it clear that beneath all the seething irritation with other people's stupidity was an anxious sense that he had no idea what to do except freak the fuck out. There was fear and anger in his material, but it was the same kind of fear and anger felt by every thoughtful type who's ever felt outnumbered by hostile morons.All that said, there's something inexplicably missing from Bigger and Blackerer, his latest comedy record. It's definitely not the confrontational stuff-- he touches on rape, racism, necrophilia involving famous Holocaust victims, anti-Semitism, drugs, pedophilia, and the ridiculousness of organized religion. It's not the left-leaning political material-- of course Cross has something to say about scares over Obama's "death panels." And it's not the self-aware showmanship; the CD opens with an intentionally ludicrous Tom Jones-style number about all the edgy, anger-provoking (yet cosmonaut-free) material yet to come in the set, while the DVD cut of the set kicks off with a foul-mouthed grade school kid in glasses and a bald cap impersonating Cross for a few minutes before pulling an Axl Rose ("Are you recording this? No way, I specifically said no recording of any kind!") and stomping off the stage....full text |
| Dustedmagazine |
| Bigger and Blackerer, David Cross’ first new stand-up album since 2004’s It’s Not Funny, is the best material he’s done in years. Less strident, way less bitter, and more personal, a lot of his act feels more intimate, at least as intimate as his persona will allow. While the layers of severe irony are still present, it doesn’t feel as defensive and off-putting as he’s previously proven, and therefore there is more of a rapport between Cross and the audience; the laughs are perhaps deeper and less superficial. The turn to the more personal is reminiscent (slightly) of Paul F. Tompkins’ turn between 2007’s Impersonal and 2009’s Freak Wharf. Not all comedians go through this transformation, but certainly a number of those whose on-stage personas are close to their real-life demeanors do. This is to say, people like Zach Galifianakis or Stephen Wright have very specific characters they play on stage, and for comics like them, the turn to more personal material seems outside of the bounds of their on-stage personas. However, people like Cross and Tompkins have on-stage personas that are rather close to their real personalities. People naturally turn a bit contemplative as they get older, and for comedians whose comedic methodologies are detached — irony in Cross’ case — this becomes too distancing. They can’t be honest with the crowd because they’ve built up an act that purposely puts up barriers. Not every comedian wants this, but when one is up night after night trying to communicate one’s ideas to people, after a while, just provoking laughter from a crowd isn’t as fulfilling as making them laugh while communicating something genuine. Obviously making your material funny is the paramount concern. One of the things that’s hampered Cross’ material in the past is his tendency toward grating political commentary where the comedy is but an afterthought. There’s something about the comedy scene that Cross came up in — Boston in the late 1980s — that produced a number of comics with particularly strident points of view. Janeane Garofalo, Marc Maron (to an extent) and Cross all come to mind, and the fact that that generation pioneered a certain kind of stand-up — more loose, less-bit-oriented — was certainly a response to the club scene at the time, as well as out of reverence to Bill Hicks, who was both successful and completely spurned the bullshit of the stand-up boom. Those influenced by Hicks tend to rant with the — intended or not — effect of making a political point as opposed to ranting with the effect of making a humorous point. I appreciate Cross’ fervor and passion, but the fact of the matter is that in a stand-up act, jokes come first. You can be as poignant or soapboxy as you want, but if you’re not funny, then it shouldn’t be in the act. Obviously these topics are near and dear to Cross; going back to Mr. Show, politics are certainly a large part of who he is, so it makes sense for it to be a good part of his act. The problem is, a lot of it tends to be angry and bitter first and funny secondary, as if the humor gets lost in the point he wants to make....full text |
| Avclub |
| During the darkest days of the Bush era, David Cross seemed like the perfect, hilariously outraged voice of reason, as heard on 2002’s fantastic Shut Up, You Fucking Baby! and 2004’s It’s Not Funny. His new album, Bigger And Blackerer, shows his voice still resonates in the more hopeful Obama era. It’s perfectly timed in that regard: When Cross toured in fall ’09, the rush of Obama’s victory had worn off, while the rancor of town-hall meetings remained fresh. Those are perfect targets for Cross’ biting humor, and he spends plenty of time on his favorite go-to punching bag, organized religion. One long track dissects the origins of Mormonism, comparing it to Scientology, but some of Bigger And Blackerer’s best bits are more personal and observational. In the third and fourth tracks, the album’s highlights, Cross shifts from the show Intervention to the junkies in his neighborhood to a hilarious bit about the perils of going out in public while tripping on psychedelics. Some bits fall flat (like one about a wish-granting angel), or are more shocking than funny—a problem Cross has had since the beginning, like when he did an impression of a crack baby on his first HBO special. The joke about getting special MLK license plates that say “NGR LVR,” or about buying his girlfriend two vibrators (“one for the house and one to take with her in case she’s raped”) provide the inevitable, somewhat anticlimactic did-he-really-say-that? moments. But the strength of the rest of Cross’ material has always outweighed his occasional missteps, and Bigger And Blackerer shows him in fine form—baffled, cynical, and as funny as ever....full text |
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