John Tole
Reign in Laughs
Stand Up! Records
Street: 09.10
Tole = Futile attempt at the angry brilliance of Bill Burr + Bill Hicks – anything good about them at all
For a comic who calls himself the “Slayer of Comedy,” John Tole spends a paltry amount of his set discussing metal. I think I heard the word “GWAR” twice. The rest of the album is monopolized by run-of-the-mill dude-bro “A” material like talking about dicks, camel toe at yoga classes and the taste of jizz. While I hate to reduce his months-long work into rubble, I gotta say his material is just way too easy. Jabbing at your wife by talking with a prissy high-pitched lisp and singing praises about KY jelly is something heard at just about every amateur comedy night in this fair city. It’s all been done before, you know? There’s obviously a market out there for this shit (drunk people really do like to laugh at anything), but, if you listen to the album in its entirety, the funniest part is when Tole starts pandering as he realizes the audience is increasingly losing interest. –Ashlee Mason