There’s something oddly “Weird Al” Yankovic about Roger Day’s “Why Does Gray Matter?”, and that’s not necessarily meant to be a dig against it. The crisp tone of all the instruments, the sort of dialed-back quality of the vocals, the actual timbre of Day’s voice, all combine to create a strange frisson of almost-parody. The themed nature of the songs themselves — each one about the brain — merely accentuates this impression.
For the most part, this is rock ‘n’ roll easy listening. The songs are fairly catchy, but you might tire of the “brain” theme after a while. Of the 14 songs on the album, 10 have the word “brain” in the title. Fortunately, the tunes are unique to themselves and are well-crafted. On a second listen-through, the lyric “Turn on your brain like a laser beam of light” really snagged my attention. For an album about intelligence and brainy matters, a redundancy like “laser beam of light” just irked me (for those not in the know, “laser” is an acronym that means “light amplification by stimulated emission of radiation” — a laser can’t be anything other than light).
In general, I appreciated the wit of the rhymes (“They send the blueprint to the cerebellum/That’s the part of your brain that knows just what to tell ‘em”), even though “The Left Brain/Right Brain Song” features an extremely poor fake British accent that had me gnashing my teeth. Will kids like this? It might be better experienced live, with a chorus of kids singing along. As a standalone album, it’s fine, and maybe your little listeners will learn a few things about the brain while they’re bopping along.
