The Slow Poisoners are campy but their delivery of this shtick-y art-rock is deadpan, theatrical, and strangely, it works. It is melodrama—I feel like I should have worn my ostrich-feathered hat and paid for a dim candlelit dinner of Cornish game hen with bread pudding and a tinkling glass of sherry while the actors pantomime behind the sheet stretched across the stage. This sensation plus the Mystery!-esque song titles ("Act Two: Nefarious Deeds," "He Who Gets Slapped") and player-piano ditties leaves the impression that this is solely a performance theatre duo who would change direction with the Grand Perseverance of the Most Northerly Wind. Why invest long-term in such unpredictable behavior?
–thiringer (Roctopus!, no address)