I hav purchased every Billy Dechand album available on cdBaby, this is the very best of them!  I wish Vito had stayed with the band, he was a good influence, keeping the music fun and interesting!
If you listen to the clips and think they rock too much, listen to the other Billy Dechand albums, they tend to be more mellow...
Too many "sounds kinda like" references to mention, you just need to listen and find them for yourself.
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With such lighthearted lyrical subject matter as nuclear proliferation, school violence and electoral reform, one might expect the Billy Dechand Band to be serious political types. Alas, nothing could be further from the truth. Filtered through Billy's wonderfully absurd songwriting style, which calls to mind the LSD-fueled surrealism of the Zappa/Beefheart days, even those heavy topics come off as goofy and chuckle-inducing. How can I laugh at nuclear proliferation, you scoff? Well, the song is called"Fu Fu Bunny" and it features the lyric, "It's Fu Fu Bunny for the floppy titty momma." See, I told you so. Funny. Most of the rest of the lyrics aren't quite as over-the-top; they're mostly smart, amusing and surprising. The opening lines to "Multiply" are a good example. Billy sings in a jocular tone, "Are you feeling alienated by consumer-driven drivel? / We've got just the car for you. It's badly made, so you can relate." When the listener is continually surprised by lyrical twists and turns, it's usually a sign of fresh songwriting. Dechand likes to surprise, and he is good at it.

The music to which these good-acid-trip lyrics are set also recalls Frank Zappa's work, in that it is somewhat hard to categorize. The band sometimes sounds like Phish, as might be expected from neo-hippies, but they also throw in some truly unexpected twists and turns. "Hard Moon Crash" features a beautiful, sad Scottish violin part, "Fu Fu Bunny" is a dirty blues romp and "Flip the Switch" (the school violence song) opens with a Dick Dale-style middle eastern/surf boom. The guys aren't virtuosos by any stretch, but they play with obvious joy and seem willing to try anything. Numerous guest musicians provide accompaniment on instruments as diverse as accordion, sax, violin and clarinet. The unconventional instrumentation really stretches the Band's sound beyond the borders of any recognizable genre.

The album is hindered somewhat by its lack of richness. It doesn't sound poorly recorded, per se, nor intentionally lo-fi -- just some what amateurish. Perhaps in the future, when this band's brilliantly wacked-out lyrics and full-blown musical expansiveness earn them a cult following, all will be forgiven. They had me at "floppy titty momma".
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Somehow mixing the lilting folk sounds of Elliott Smith with the timing and style of Weezer, the better part of the album is one of the more exciting releases from a local band in a while. Experimenting with elements that are both complex and beautiful, the band plays with close harmonies in the same vein as college-favored band Guster. It takes this kind of well-advised abandon and applies it to its instrumentation, with string arrangements, accordion, clarinet, and even a didjeridu.
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