Tsar

There are over 2500 artists listed in The All Music Guide to Rock, and the influence of almost all of them is dutifully referenced somewhere in Band-Girls-Money, the second album proper from L.A. trash brats Tsar. Cribbing their stupid catchy melodies from Cheap Trick, their glam-tastic cock-rock swagger from Destroyer-era Kiss and their charmingly sub-moronic ramalama from the Ramones, they’re the punk’s "loud, fast rules!” ethos in the inked-and-eyelinered flesh. And while Band-Girls-Money shows absolutely zero artistic development from their eponymous 2000 debut, it’s hard to find fault with a record that pops and rocks with such gleeful audacity. "Wanna Get Dead” is a full-contact Bay City Roller derby, gob-smacking glam-punk bubblegum set to a restless, ADD-frazzled party-hard pulse. Elsewhere, the spastic skronk of "Startime” morphs into a throbbing ’80s pop-metal bitch slap to Sunset Strip poseurs (best lyric: "Go home and watch some TiVO, fuckers!”) complete with its own brass section. This is the kind of gloriously shambolic cock-rocket that gives Robin Black the night sweats.