Review of the song "Peppermint Bee" from Itsy Bits & Bubbles by Boston Band Crush

I went to my local Target yesterday, and I made the mistake of going through the toy section. Not even into the toy section. Just near it. And it's madness. Are they selling toy pianos in there? Or has Casio cornered the market? I don't know – the toy section is too crazy to even think of getting into. If they want to spike the sales of toy pianos and make Casio concentrate on making watches (they make stellar watches, really), then maybe they should start playing the music of Twink over the store loudspeakers. The Twink-ies are releasing a record on Thursday, and they have generously, in the spirit of the season, offered up a song as a sort of sneak preview. You know you want it.

We're just gonna level with you here and say that novelty acts never, ever are cool. This is largely due to the fact that they lean heavily upon their novelty, whatever it may be, and let that become the entire show. So you see someone billed as a "toy piano ensemble" and you might even offer an instant and involuntary sigh. Then "Peppermint Bee" begins electronically buzzing around your head, in your ears and then, yes, it passes directly through you, in the left ear and out the right. And you realize that this Twink is onto something.

"Peppermint Bee" sounds off like we have just accessed some strange and whimsically schizophrenic level on our favorite 8-bit video game that perhaps the developers never planned for us to find. The sounds are weird and jumpy, as if they themselves are surprised to be found and witnessed. The mix is toy piano and primitive electronic video-game soundtrack, punctuated by electronic sound effects of platforms being jumped upon and plumbers falling into never-ending chasms to their inevitable depths.

The group is billed as a toy piano ensemble, and the toy piano is on premier display here, sounding bright and merry and high quality enough to make us wonder if Bosendorfer has started manufacturing concert level toy pianos for all the toy piano ensembles out there. Somewhere. The wacky thing about this piece (and yes, we're able to pick out one wacky thing to concentrate upon) is the fact that the toy piano actually plinks out a melody somewhere in this crazy mix, and that melody has a hook that is as shiny as it is candy-cane flavored. And that is wacky.