Album #284: Clown Core – Van

• Released: 2020
• Origin: Emigrant Valley, Nevada, USA
• Label: Self-released
• Best Track: You Are Pregnant

At only 17 minutes, some will argue this is not an album at all. I think I’ve said before than my view is 10 or more tracks is an album regardless of length, and fewer tracks can still be an album if there’s enough length and depth to them.

Whatever it is, Van, a collection of tracks created by two individuals dressed as clowns while travelling in a battered old vehicle, is probably the strangest release I’ve heard all year.

What makes it all the more peculiar is that the pair clearly have music talent, as evidenced most noticeably on ‘Computers’, but they largely eschew this in favour of slapstick silliness like clown horns, fart noises and trumpet tootling, with the heavily, grunted vocals making Clown Core not just their name, but a fair description of their genre.

So, in a journey that includes trolling a McDonald’s drive-through worker, the highlight is probably the raw, abrasive pairing of ‘Bologna Penis’ and ‘You Are Pregnant’. The album ends with a funky upbeat number which, continuing the surrealism, they call ‘Infinite Real of Incomprehensible Suffering’.

Weird, but not just for the sake of being weird. It’s pretty interesting and refreshing.