THE CASE AGAINST ART

For a bit of time, I thought that French TV was one of the coolest underground bands I had discovered. They play a complex breed of music stemming from the depths of Cantebury, jazz fusion, RIO and other what-have-nots, throw in a bit of nonsense humour to ''ground themselves'' and sport some of the most hilarious liner notes this side of Frank Zappa. Naturally, I wanted to keep getting more works from them, but this album made me hit ''that thing on the wall'' a lot faster than I had anticipated.

While THE VIOLENCE OF AMATEURS is a great album in its own right, two songs in ''Tiger Tea'' and ''Mail Ordered Quarks'' weren't exactly my thing; way too serious and deviod of a memorable moment. It seems as if THE CASE AGAINST ART is trying to channel those two pieces alone and milk them out over an entire album. To put it bluntly, I was the least bit amused. What happened to the funny stuff like ''The Kokonimo Stomp''?

Beats me, although I'm sure plenty of people would enjoy having a few words with me. The only speck of funny I could find was the carnival atmosphere of that big ''W'' song at the end, but it didn't last long enough and didn't come early enough in the album for me to really care. I will admit that ''That Thing on the Wall'' is the most standout (I hesitate to say best) track here, but that's probably a byproduct of coming first and the rest of the album swimming in a sea of blah.

Any serious music fan looking for some unknown thing might be interested in this album. If you want pep, loudness, humour or excitement, then look elsewhere across a good chunk of the prog spectrum. It has music kudos, but it seems to lack focus and direction. Then again, I realize that most progsters might enjoy this album if heard, and I'm probably in a countable minority.