Not too memorable (at least not right away) but possessed of the Australian magic by which all instruments are sonically clear and distinct yet clearly in service of the same goal.

Ultimately sort of exhausting (not in a good way). Of the two songs they put on the web, “Sleep Is Wrong” is much more representative; sprawling, shrill, and too brutal for me in places. It hasn’t put me off finding an Idiot Flesh record, though.

I never checked out Fivehead because, with the jokey name and all, I figured they would be a less interesting version of scenemates Silver Scooter. As so often happens in these cases, I was thrilled that a dollar-bin gave me the chance to lose my preconceptions, except that I’d been right in the first place.

A habit I’ve noticed among friends, which I’ve now picked up as well: saying “Yay t-shirts!” (or whatever) with no comma or “for” after “Yay”. This makes it more like “Viva X!” or “Up with X!”, whereas I can’t think of other contemporary American expressions of enthusiasm that follow the same pattern. Anyone?

[Update: Michael Courage points out "Go Pats!" True enough.]

A good party record, and typical of party records in that attempts at profundity and mellowness fall flat. Musically, sounds a little more like dub than you’d expect from its crowd-pleasing big-beat origins.

Haven’t done this in a while, but there’s a bunch of free music I’m listening to… www.doubtfulpalace.com has tracks by many of Tim Walters’ varied projects (and others he’s just hosting), including a beautiful cover of the Loud Family’s “Inverness” by a capella horde Shouting Distance. www.sleepytimegorillamuseum.com is the website of a mischievous art-metal band involving most of Charming Hostess; two songs from their album are somewhere under the leftmost link. www.mocrecords.com have posted “Hit By A Car”; it’s a posse cut by Seven Against Thebes, the shockingly-good rap crew invented (and singlehandedly manned) by Kleenex Girl Wonder guy Graham Smith. www.benno.com probably have lots of nice things in their radio archive, but I’m listening to the Lucksmiths concert.

Mac McCaughan’s instrumental backing is more varied than anything Pollard’s had to work with in his last several collaborations, but it doesn’t sound like he quite knows what to do with it. I bet this’ll be neat in shuffle play with the 20 other Guided By Voices-related records on my iPod.

I have to check my sources better. I thought Sensational (ne Torture) was in the Jungle Brothers until J. Beez Wit The Remedy, when in fact that was his only record with the crew. The production on this album’s pretty cool — I can see how it would be influential — but not what I expected. I also have this unfortunate imprinting thing where pretty much any Native Tongues rapper reminds me of Young MC, and therefore of my high school friend Matt being inspired to ask his shy future wife Amy out on their first date by the incessant repetition of “Bust A Move” on the radio 13 summers ago.

Weird. Sumner’s vocals are unbelievably bad; he sounds like the dying, desperate Tim Roth in Reservoir Dogs, breathing with odd parts of his body and perpetually on the verge of collapse. That certainly makes for an interesting contrast with the music but I do wonder how this saw the light of day.

At DIY concerts in the past month, I’ve seen the following things:

• People calmly doing their laundry in the machines at the edge of the stage while performers were on.
• Three indie-rockers arguing over how to change a light bulb. (They were eventually unsuccessful, so I still don’t know how many it takes.)
• The two straightest-looking girls at a Mates Of State show doing zydeco dirty-dancing moves with each other.
• Some guy in the audience making a complicated shadow-puppet with both hands and having it sing along to the music.