The legend is that these were improvised home recordings that were never intended to be released, created just for the amusement of the Flemion brothers and their friends, but who can say? There's a lot of mythology around this strange, beautiful bedroom pop gem.
Let's dodge the elephant in the room and talk about the music for a sec: the melodies are hooky and airy and brilliant, the songs full of delightful swerves and details that surprise every time you listen. It's a free, buoyantly lo-fi album; The Frogs are up there with Guided By Voices in their generous distribution of perfect moments captured to tape.
That elephant: this is a legendarily gay album, with lyrics in every song about men and having sex (and more!) with men, all cocks, balls, cum, assholes and the occasional "watermelon seeds up your snoot-snout", and as the references pile up and up...is it meant to shock straight-laced straights? To celebrate homosexuality? To make fun of it? To make fun of people who make fun of it? How does the fact that the brothers are presumed straight affect the question? Discuss.
On some level the album manages to be all of those things and none of them. Could anyone trying to be overtly pro-gay make a song as ridiculous as I Don't Care If U Disrespect Me? Could anyone trying to be overtly anti-gay make a song as poignant as Homos? The subject matter is engaged with too deeply to be done for novelty, too joyfully to be done out of homophobia, and yet seems engaged in some sonic, sexual version of blackface.
I'm reminded of a dinner where a seemingly-homophobic man was claiming that "buttsex" was inherently morally wrong. A few liberal-types were trying to diplomatically find a common ground, trying to rephrase his sentiment in less-judgmental terms, but he pushed back harder the more they tried, and the situation grew tense. I said out loud, to no-one in particular, "Buttsex is like skiing..." and noticed with dismay that everyone had stopped talking to listen to me, and that I sincerely had no idea where I was going with this, but finished "...some people like it, and some people don't".
Maybe it was the fact that people were expecting a joke, what with all that "A is like B" windup, but it but it got some laughs, some groans, and some ribbing, and managed, surprisingly, to defuse the situation. Maybe The Frogs don't want to gear anyone up about much of anything. Maybe they just made the gayest album they could, with no particular malice in mind, and the joke is on us for trying to deconstruct it 4.5/5
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