MAC BLACKOUT- 'The Rabid Babies' CD.  Here it is, the new CD from MAC BLACKOUT of the Functional Blackouts and Daily Void.  Reference points? Kraftwerk, Devo, Screamers, Big Black, Chrome. But they should only be viewed as reference points because MAC BLACKOUT doesn’t really sound like any of them. Thankfully you can’t really pigeonhole MAC BLACKOUT as another one dimensional dark and depressed bedroom renaissance man. Ya a lot of his songs do definitely have a very bleak, pessimistic view of the world. But there are other songs on ‘The Rabid Babies’ that are more care free, silly and almost playful. Normally, I’d be pretty quick to dismiss songs like that as cheeky, emotional d*ou*che-baggery, but they’re written and presented in a way that you can’t help but love ‘em. Just take the whistling chorus in ‘Fifteen Minutes Of Famous Screams’ or the off kilter Xylophone tinkering in ‘Pocket For Everything'.  At the surface and on their own, they’d probably sound really corny. But in the context of these two songs, they really do add to the unique appeal of each tune and throw a nice curve ball into the standard synth, punk, wierdo song paradigm. And it’s that ‘what you hear is what you get’ aesthetic that really resonates with the listener and makes MAC BLACKOUT seem more humane amongst all the mechanical, instruments he uses to create these masterpieces. Ya, I’m sure MAC does go through his fair share of emotional hard times where he hones his mood into intense, darkwave expressions-of-the-moment as heard on numerous songs on the record. But unlike many other artists he also documents some of his more elated, joyous times in songs like ‘Molten Emissions’ and ‘Darlin’ Don’t You See’. After all life isn’t a war zone every day and he’s not afraid to let you in on his twisted take on happiness.