Showbread

Goddamn this album starts with a bang. "A Llama Eats A Giraffe (And Vice Versa)” hoofs you right in the gonads and keeps on with the beating for nearly four minutes. With unrelenting guitars and frantic screams that recall such intense artists as the Blood Brothers, it’s a glorious start to a fairly strong record that almost lives up the promise of that opening track. For the next 12 songs, the band play with bizarre electronics on "Sampsa Meets Kafka,” straight ahead rock on "Mouth Like A Magazine,” and even lush indie pop on "Matthias Replaces Judas.” Yet for every two pieces of genre-bending songwriting genius, there exists a bland Blood Brothers knock off that fails to capture the energy of the record’s brilliant beginning. Stripped down to eight or nine songs, No Sir… could have been a masterpiece, but as it stands now, it is a flawed but worthwhile record.