Slomo Rabbit Kick

Just the idea of a concept record is enough to make me all weak in the knees — it's the nerdy absorption required to assemble all the narrative bits and the dedication required to follow it to completion. That said, it's not entirely clear what happens in the deep, dark bass forest. It's likely that it's little more than the bass monster/rabbit hangs out in the basement/burrow and kicks out the jams. Jay Chilcote, the man behind the Rabbit Kick is up to the challenge: he has a good pop sensibility and a discriminating ear for the found noises that make these things pleasurable. There are slacker keyboards galore, Pavement-y hooks and a vaguely retro-communist fixation that keeps resurfacing. Like other American basement rockers of his ilk, he has a habit of using nice, grand words he doesn't fully understand, and the album would be more satisfying on the whole if it weren't so crammed full with every half-gestated idea he had. Most songs are crazily short, introducing all kinds of whacked-out ideas that aren't fully pursued (shades of early Unicorns). It comes with a U.S. indie rock pedigree (Chris Walla mastered it) and it's all very pleasurable in a not-entirely-guilt-free way, but I get the feeling that Yankophile Pitchfork-reading college record reviewers are skewered mercilessly here, so I'm all for it.