But in the few weeks since I’ve started listening to Maps & Atlases’ Perch Patchwork, I’ve awoken nearly every morning with one of its tracks spinning in my mental stereo.  And I don’t mean just one of its tracks.  I mean most of the album’s songs have had at least one turn waking me up.  This album is that absurdly catchy.  Yet these melodies aren’t merely absurdly catchy.  They’re nimble and sophisticated and precise, like Eastern European acrobats.  Propelled by refreshingly unorthodox rhythms, intricate riffs, and singer Dave Davison’s tastefully poignant voice, the tunes frequently ascend toward heaven like fluttering moths before trickling back down to earth like misty rain.

Though perhaps what I love even more than the melodies is the way that Perch Patchwork feels like a journey.  Maybe not an epic journey, but a unique and very personal journey, taken by a nostalgic nomad who’s destined to wander forever while pining for a home he can never return to. (That’s the impression I get, at least.  The lyrics, while evocative, are often oblique.  As in, “I slept on/ the solid ground/ near your house/ and the frost looked like/ a castle wrapped up in tin.”)

The journey starts with a bemused yet optimistic-sounding look toward the future (”Will”), but over the course of the next few tracks, the tone gradually darkens like falling dusk.  Triumphant tribal drums are haunted by heartbreak in “The Charm;”  the danceable beat and sprightly, Phil Collins-like melodies of “Living Decorations” are afflicted by wiry, jittery guitars; on “Solid Ground,” hope is tempered by wintry angst.  Near the middle of the journey (”Is”), some minor-key acoustic guitars gallop in 7/8 time as the night wind carries the wails of lost souls, and it sounds like the foreshadowing of a long, bleak road ahead.

Instead, “Is” leads us into a sunny afternoon of meadow-frolicking- complete with zippy flutes, tropical brass and shimmering harmonies- that lasts for four and a half tracks.   Typically I have a low tolerance for such meadow-frolicking, but since the tunes continue to be so compelling and airtight, I’ve never been tempted to skip anything in this section of the record.  Then halfway through track 10 (”If This Is”), the mood drastically shifts once more, this time into something comforting yet bittersweet, like a blanket knitted by a long-lost lover.  This sentiment carries through to the title track at the very end, where Davison sings, “We can leave this place/ no one lives here anymore.”  He sounds resigned, but never defeated.  “With the race over/ we take what we can get.”   It’s a fittingly stirring ending to one of the most beautifully-crafted albums I’ve heard in years.

I haven’t heard any of the 4 EPs Maps & Atlases have released, but I stumbled upon their full-length debut Perch Patchwork and was pleasantly surprised.  Their sound is rich with peculiar, worldly rhythms and acrobatic melodies that feel more like hooks than exercises for music theory geeks.  Sometimes it gets a little too breezy for my taste, but there’s no question that I’d like to spend some more time with this record.  A full review should be up here within the next couple of weeks.

Is it possible to hear the sound of approaching doom?  Does approaching doom sound kind of like room tone, but darker?  Can we hear approaching doom squeezing a singer’s nerves tightly in its clutches?  Can we physically sense the presence of approaching doom as it plays maestro to an ill-fated orchestra?

For instance, some people seem convinced that they could hear Kurt Cobain’s demons lurking in the shadows of Unplugged In New York.  Yet how many of those claims come from keen human intuition, and how many are simply embellished memories revised by tragedy?  Hard to tell.

I can tell you this for sure, though: when I first listened to Cambodian Rocks, I heard something.  Something strange, spectral, and vaguely sinister.  I don’t know if I would have called it “approaching doom” back then.  But I definitely heard something.

Cambodian Rocks and I met years ago, back when I still clacked through the racks of used CD shops.  At first sight, Cambodian Rocks sure didn’t seem like a classic record.  The cover art looked like a crummy Xerox of a cheap postcard.  The back of the jewel case suggested the work of a company that advertised X-Ray Specs and Sea Monkeys to comic-reading kids in the ’50s  (“Great music and lots of fun!” the album says of itself).  In place of a track listing, there was a note from the album’s compiler, a traveler identified only as P.W.:

“…In a truck on our way up to Angkor, the driver had one cassette which he played over and over.  All of it was sung in Cambodian.  There was pop, rock, soul, and it sounded incredibly fresh.  I was able to hum my favorite song well enough to get a copy of it later…”

P.W. finishes by declaring, “You’ve never heard anything like it.” While I didn’t quite believe the hype, I was intrigued.  Maybe subconsciously I had an inkling that the musicians who played on this album would eventually become casualties in one of history’s biggest genocides- but I doubt it.  (In my defense, my 9th grade “Global Studies” class never taught me a lick about the Khmer Rouge.)  No, all I remember thinking at the time of that purchase was that Cambodian Rocks might be worth at least a few bucks and a couple of listens.

P.W. was right, though.  Not long into my first spin through the album, I realized I had never heard anything like Cambodian Rocks before.  It wasn’t merely the novelty of hearing the fuzzbox guitars, beach party beats and sly hooks of Western pop and garage rock filtered through the ancient spirits of Far Eastern folk music (though that part’s certainly very cool).  See, on the same day I bought my copy of Cambodian Rocks, I bought a similar comp called Thai A Go-Go, and I soon discovered that the latter paled hideously in comparison to the former.  That fascinatingly inexplicable something that oozed out of the Cambodians was nowhere to be found with the Thai.  So I kept on listening to Cambodian Rocks, trying in vain to grasp its elusive mystique.

It helped a lot that the album has so much more to offer than just its aura.  The strongest and most immediate allure was the young siren who appeared on about half the album’s tracks.  Her voice was outrageously nasal, yet full of grace and soul.  Her high-pitched quavering made her sound girlish and naive, yet she also exuded a commanding diva-like presence- somewhere between Diana Ross and Betty Boop, only Cambodian.

A few years later, once Wikipedia came to be, I was pleased to learn that the singer, Ros Serey Sothea, was something of a national treasure in her day.  She had the kind of voice that could lure you to a snail shop.  (No, really.)  The King of Cambodia himself called her “The Golden Voice of the Royal Capital.”

Then, shortly after realizing who she was and how much well-deserved success she enjoyed, I was crushed to learn that Ros Serey Sothea, like many other artists and intellectuals in 1970s Cambodia, vanished without a trace and was most likely executed in The Killing Fields.

Once I realized the connection between Cambodian Rocks and the Khmer Rouge, that peculiar something seemed to make a lot more sense.  The way those ominous organs pierce the Top 40 melodies.  The abysses between the cracks in the cheery veneer.  Those startling screams that start to sound less like teenagers blowing off steam, and more like honest-to-God primal fear.  They don’t really scream like that on Nuggets.

And that’s how it dawned on me that Cambodian Rocks was the sound of the Last Night On Earth Party that rages as as Pol Pot’s murderous goons batter down the concert hall doors.  Even the crummy Xerox postcard on the cover suddenly had another shade of meaning: the idols have been frozen right in the middle of a jubilant dance.  Invigorated by divine and ancient music, their arms reach to the heavens and their heels are so happy they’re kicking themselves in the butt.  The expressions on their faces are not quite so joyous, however.  The idols wear only faint traces of smiles.  Could it be that they can’t shake a bad feeling that someone’s about to kill their celebration in a most gruesome fashion?

Of course, that could just be tragedy shaping my perceptions again.

Thanks to WFMU’s Beware Of The Blog, you can hear all of Cambodian Rocks right here.

Let’s say you’re watching a horror movie where the villain is this Lovecraftian beast, as old as time itself.  Despite its gargantuan size and blob-like physique, this beast can move with the force of a rhino and the agility of a mongoose.  It has the insouciant attitude of a high school bully in his third senior year.  It could maul an asthmatic little girl, then turn right around and high-five his beastly bros while they all chuckle like dumb stoners.

And just as this beast is lurching toward one of its victims, ready to strike- suddenly you see the zipper on the costume start to unzip.  Then the dude inside the costume jumps out, looks right into the camera and plays 6 verses of “Oh Susanna” using armpit farts.

I get this feeling a lot when I listen to The Melvins, and especially during The Bride Screamed Murder. When they wield their monster truck riffs and their kinky metal rhythms and crane-sized hooks- which they do for nearly 30 of the new album’s 45 minutes- they’re unstoppable.  Rock like theirs both empowers and frightens me.  It makes me feel 15 feet taller and 10 tons heavier, and it makes me want to rampage my way through midtown Manhattan in rush hour.

I also find the band’s juvenile Dadaist humor refreshing- but only in small doses.  Like many great class clowns, The Melvins don’t seem to know (or care) when enough is enough.  A couple of ideas that might’ve been amusing for 15 seconds (a boot camp cadence, a leaky balloon rubber chicken impersonating a jazzy sax) become painful before they reach the minute-and-a-half mark.  Worst of all are the last 2 tracks: a sludgy, smart-ass cover of “My Generation” and a tedious, half-assed nightmare called “P.G. x 3.”  At a combined length of 14 minutes, these 2 tracks gunk up almost an entire third of this otherwise ferocious album.

Yet as much as these kinds of aggressive shenanigans can get on my nerves, I suppose it’s all for the best.  I can’t help but wonder if this refusal to take themselves too seriously is a big reason why The Melvins continue to roll on long after most of their humorless grunge-metal disciples have self-destructed.  (See also The Ramones, AC/DC.)  If that attitude means they’ll keep cranking out killers like “Evil New War God” and “Electric Flower” for many more years, then awesome.  I just wish they’d keep more of their silliness confined to the studio.

I’m only familiar with one previous Melvins album, 1994’s Stoner Witch, but that album is one of my favorites. More so than most other rock albums, I totally want Stoner Witch to think I’m cool. It would probably just make fun of me and beat me up and steal my woman if it ever met me, but I love it anyway. Stoner Witch is Todd, and I am Beavis & Butt-head.

The Bride Screamed Murder is The Melvins’ 18th album and their 8th for Ipecac Recordings, and while it may not be a Stoner Witch it does remind me that I ought to be listening to a lot more Melvins. Expect a full review on or around its June 1st release.

In my First Listen review of this record I called the songwriting “unremarkable,” and in a way, I was right.  But now after 10 listens I realize that in a much bigger way, I totally missed the point.  Unlike Jack White’s other bands, The Dead Weather isn’t necessarily about making melody-driven rock songs- they’re about riffs, grooves, and atmosphere.  On their second album, it’s apparent that the band is not only getting better at what they do, they sound like they’re having a lot more fun doing it, too.

The air oozes humidity and buzzes with static electricity.  Jack Lawrence’s tense but fluid basslines creep up behind you like shady private detectives.  White and Dean Ferita’s cobra-blues guitar licks fill in the cracks between their respective other bands (a little less pyrotechnic than The White Stripes, not quite as metal as Queens Of The Stone Age).  White’s drums tie the strings together with simple, strutting beats, and Ferita’s synths bubble up like neon potions in a mad scientist’s test tube rack.  The vocals by White and Alison Mosshart may not add much melody, but they do add plenty of rhythmic punch and raw bad-assery.  Mosshart’s sultry hollers sound like come-ons cloaked in threats (”Let’s go where no one can see us/ and find the difference between us/ you can cry like a baby/ just let me do what I need to.”)  When White’s in the spotlight, he likes to spit his brand of wry, rap-like braggadocio (”All the white girls trip when I/ sing at Sunday service”).  Every few minutes the atmosphere reaches a breaking point: the sky explodes into thunder, lightning, and torrential rain for a brief spell before it all drifts away just as quickly.  Then The Dead Weather keep on trudgin’ along the muddy road, soaked to their socks, until the next storm crashes over them.

That’s not to say Sea Of Cowards is an overly repetitive record, as most of the tracks have distinct vibes.  The sleek UFO tractor beams of “The Difference Between Us” enhance the allure of Mosshart’s bipolar coquette.  The slithering leviathan chorus of “Die By The Drop” and the skittery spider-walk verse of “Gasoline” add layers of delicious dread.  And the bluntly-titled “I’m Mad” offers so many great moments that it feels much longer than its 3:13 running time (in a good way).

Not too surprisingly, most of the Jack White-fronted tracks tend to feel like little more than methadone for those of us eagerly awaiting our next White Stripes fix.  Opener “Blue Blood Blues” is the most Stripes-like number here- more specifically, it kind of resembles “Icky Thump” with its herky-jerky stomp and off-the-top-of-the-head-sounding nonsense lyrics (”Crack a window, crack a broken bone/ crack your knuckles when you’re at home”).  Yet with the addition of some ghostly backing vocals, the track at least makes an effort to fit The Dead Weather’s style.  “Looking At The Invisible Man” tries a similar trick by taking what sounds like a White Stripes B-side and slathering it in radioactive bullfrog guitars and moon-elf vocal filters, only it doesn’t work quite as well this time.  Then there’s “Old Mary,” an artsy indulgence of White’s mutant Catholicism (”Old Mary, full of grease, your heart stops within you…scary are the fruits of your tomb and harsh are the terms of your sentence”).  It’s not a track I’d listen to out of context, but I love it as a haunting coda to the album as a whole.

In fact, despite what my First Listen-self said about the unremarkable songwriting and lack of “hits” on Sea Of Cowards, “Old Mary” and “Invisible Man” are the only two tracks I wouldn’t put in rotation if I still had a college radio show.  I’m still not sure if the rest of the record is, as I originally hoped it would be, “more than an intoxicating mix of blues, fury and sweaty monster sex.”  Then again, how much more should I really demand from such visceral rock n’ roll?  What matters most, I think, is that with each spin I take through Sea Of Cowards, the deeper it sinks into my blood.

Jack White may continue to keep his hitmaking formulas and his sympathetic sweetheart side hidden from The Dead Weather, but Sea Of Cowards probably kicks ass anyway.  White’s third band’s second album struts for 35 minutes like it’s headed toward a one-night stand with The Bride of Frankenstein.

On first listen, I forgave what sounded like unremarkable songwriting because I was seduced by the riffs.  They’re heavy and spry, liquid and sharp, and they’re the main reason I plan to spin Sea Of Cowards at least nine more times.  The album’s official US release is May 11, so by then I should have a better idea whether it’s more than just an intoxicating work of blues, fury and sweaty monster sex.

Editor’s Note: In a series of “classic” articles, 10Listens is giving some love to albums that may not have gotten much in the past.  These won’t be reviews, per se, but collections of ideas spawned by revisiting albums we may be alone in loving. There’s no timetable to when these appear, so they will come as they may.  Enjoy. Oh, and if anyone comes up with a good name for this series, I’m all ears.

Somewhere in the second half of our 20th Century, a Delta Blues Man’s hitchhiking his way up the Mississippi toward Chicago, thinking he’s gonna be the second coming of Howlin’ Wolf.  Along the way he’s picked up by a van full of kids- whatta they call ‘em, beatniks?  Hippies?  Only they don’t dress like no beatniks or hippies.  They wear bold pinstripe suits and finely groomed facial hair, like dandy-boys.  Only they ain’t no dandy boys neither.  There may not be a single word to describe what these weirdos are.  Their license plate says California, so the Blues Man assumes they’re from San Francisco.  Then again they could very well be from Mars, or the future.

Whatever they are, they’re so stoked to meet an authentic Delta Blues singer- guess what, they’re musicians too, man!  They should totally jam!  Now the Blues Man reckons he sure ain’t no square, but he still wonders how much common ground he’ll find with these cats.  Even if they’re not hippies they still must be waist deep in all that hippy-dippy acid rock- The Magic Doors and The Strawberry Airplane and such.  He asks if they know any Bo Diddley, and they answer by busting out a gritty impromptu a cappella rendition of “Who Do You Love?”  So the Blues Man reckons these crazy cats just might be all right after all. “Well hell yes we can jam!” he says, and the not-quite-hippies rejoice.  But first, they say, how bout a little grass?  You dig grass, don’t you, Blues Man?  Sho ’nuff, baby.  Sho nuff, n’ yes I do…

When the smoke clears, the Delta Blues Man could swear they’re somewhere in the Mojave.  But how’d that happen if they were just on the outskirts of Memphis- what was it, 20 minutes ago?  5 hours ago?  And is that a giant gila monster sleeping on top of the sun?

They’re not even in the van anymore.  In fact, the van’s nowhere to be seen.  They’re all just standing there, surrounded by miles of sand and rock, with nothing but their gear in front of them.  Amps too, with power lights glowing red and traces of feedback humming in strange frequencies- but where in the hell are they plugged in?

The kid behind the drum kit says, “OK Blues Man, you kick it off and we’ll follow.”  So The Delta Blues Man steps up to a mic that looks like a bug-headed tree, and he clears his throat.  He starts playing this riff he’s been fooling with lately, this thing with a little slide to it, though he doesn’t really have any lyrics for it yet.  Then all of a sudden words just come to him from deep within his subconscious.  “I was born in a desert…came on up from New Orleeeeeans…” Wait, that don’t make no sense, ain’t no deserts in New Orleans…”I came upon a tornado, sunlight in the sky…” Tornadoes in sunlight?  A moon stickin’ in my eye?  What in the-

In spite of talkin’ all this nonsense jive, the band dives right in, fast and bulbous: a squid eating dough in a polyethylene bag.  The drummer lays down this herky-jerky locomotive groove, like a Johnny Cash tune with a peg-leg.  It’s odd, but the Blues Man can dig it.  The lead guitarist- Cooder, was that his name?- kid’s got otherworldly chops, he’s dancing on some other plane.  And that bass player!  So much energy, and yet so very smooth…

…he realizes they’ve been playing a brand new song for about a minute and a half now, in fact they’re already at the breakdown.  Just drums and that perfect bass line and the Blues Man hollering, “Zig-Zag traveler for the mercy mile!”, whatever that means.  It’s like the moment that all American music has been building up toward until now.  It’s blues, it’s Motown, it’s rock n’ motherfucking roll.  And not only that, it’s going to affect the course of music to come- that’s right, he can see the future now.  He doesn’t know John Lennon, and he doesn’t even know if he likes John Lennon, but he knows John Lennon is gonna go crazy for this noise.  Him and a couple guys named Joe Strummer and Tom Waits.  Also some blues rockin’ kid named Jackie White who hasn’t even been born yet.

The Blues Man’s mind tricks him into thinking he’s coming down, and so the band slides into a much safer song.  Safe as milk, you might say, so long as that milk hasn’t been basking in the desert heat.  The kind of song you’d sing to snag a woman: “Call on me whenever you’re lonely and blue.”  They could probably play Ed Sullivan with this tune, if they were the types who’d want to play on Ed Sullivan.  OK that was nice and all, but let’s get far out again, fellas.  I’m gonna sing this next one like some kind of bayou monster, and let’s see if we can make those guitars sound like mechanical caterpillars.  Yeah, that’s it.  And maybe let’s do a bridge where we slow it down to half-time and throw in some pianos or xylophones or something like that. All right now just for kicks let’s try another Top 40 ditty, something a little Smokey Robinson.  Hold on- you’ve got one of them theremins?  Well let’s see what kind of magic we can make with that bastard!  Ooh yeah, I can feel that vibe all the way down in my EEEEEeeeeeeEEEEE-Lec-Tri-Suh-Teeeeee….

In the distance, a mighty lighthouse rises up from the Earth and spews lightning like a gigantic Tesla coil.  The band skips jauntily down the Yellow Brick Road.  They summon the ancient spirits of Abba Zabba from dark, baboon-infested jungles. They grumble about factory jobs and pesky bosses while a wandering coyote drops by to blow on harmonica.  They bow and praise the miracle of Woman.  There’s a sad, Kafkaesque identity crisis in an unsettling time signature.  Finally the sun sets on our mythic jam session with a surreal memory of a distant Autumn- “feet of dust under trees of rust.”  Then the sun comes up again.  The Blues Man and his magic band decide that this whimsically menacing trip has gone on exactly as long as it needed to.  This is their gift to the gods, and if the gods desire to share this gift with humankind, these songs will find their way back somehow.

“Every time a bell rings,” goes one famous quotation about bells, “an angel gets his wings.” Another one says, “Never send to know for whom the bell tolls; it tolls for thee.” So then what happens if those bells are broken? Do new angels just hang around Earth, flummoxed and wingless? Will mere mortals no longer know when it’s our time to die?

Chances are, James Mercer of The Shins and Brian (Danger Mouse) Burton of Gnarls Barkley didn’t have these exact questions in mind when they named their collaboration “Broken Bells.” But their self-titled debut most definitely exists within a bemused realm between life and afterlife. Mercer sings about ghosts, specters, vaporized beings, messages from the dead, phantoms of lost time, and that ever-elusive highway to heaven. Burton’s production is haunted by supernatural voices, dusty pianos, and shadowy synths. The atmosphere, while frequently frisky and elegant, is persistently unsettling, as if it’s always on the verge of revealing some bubbly, non-threatening mindfuck.

Perhaps the most shocking revelation of Broken Bells is simply how well it works, considering the widely disparate styles of its members. Burton built his career on making the past reach out to the future- think The Beatles adapting to fit Jay-Z’s rhymes on The Grey Album, or the spirit of the ’60s hauling ass to catch up with Cee-Lo Green’s 21st Century sizzle in Gnarls Barkley. Mercer, on the other hand, has typically retreated from the ultramodern world through his old-fashioned folk-rock. The collision of these two opposing forces could have easily resulted in a disastrous clash. Instead, Broken Bells creates a bold and timeless sound straight out of the 3rd-and-a-half dimension, at an intersection of hip hop, folk, and experimental pop.

The album starts with two of the strongest tracks of either artist’s career. Both “The High Road” and “Vaporize” overflow with superb melodies, seductive beats, and a Tears For Fears-ish vibe where the songs sound like polite but passionate protests into the cold, indifferent void. “The longer we wait around, the faster the years go by,” the chorus of multi-tracked Mercers reminds us in “Vaporize.” During the bridge, the voices practically cry, “Make our escape, before we start to vaporize,” and they sound like they just might. On paper, such things may not seem like the freshest insights, but on record, the resonance of these passages tingles my hide.

The third track, “Your Head Is On Fire,” glides into mellow, trippy territory that’s most effective when you’re buzzed in a steamy late-night bath. The offbeat disco of “The Ghost Inside” follows, providing one of the album’s most charming moments as the traditionally non-funky Mercer suddenly gets his Prince on. And with the sinuous and spellbinding “Sailing To Nowhere,” Broken Bells‘ fantastic first half draws to a close.

Unfortunately, the second half gradually reveals that Burton and Mercer front-loaded the album with most of their A-material.  ”Trap Doors” and “October” are the two least adventurous tracks here, and they’re anchored by some of the record’s most lethargic hooks. At least these tunes are broken up by the super-villainous grime of “Citizen,” even if it’s the one spot where Mercer seems out of his element. “Mongrel Heart” initially sounds like a pretty cool Morrissey tribute, until a Morricone interlude lifts the whole thing to the level of sublime; it’s the clear standout of side 2. “The Mall And Misery” is catchy and groovy with a sharp, rusty guitar hook, and it’s a satisfying way for the album to zoom off into the cosmos.

Despite Broken Bells‘ top-heaviness, the record as a whole wields an eerie power over me every time I listen. Not just because it’s one of those records where you’re still discovering its bells and whistles even after a dozen spins. It’s all about the alchemy, the aura, and the sense that some strange intelligence is at play here…some alien presence, disturbing but friendly, peering at us from behind an intergalactic veil…something trying to tell us the end is always near, but now is never the time to panic…we are alive, and we are dead.

Fang Island kicks off their self-titled full-length debut with both literal and figurative fireworks, and by the end of it they sound like they’re headed toward some kind of rock n’ roll promised land. The big problem is the journey in the middle- I just couldn’t find enough musical or emotional hooks along the way to get very attached to it.

I wanted to love this album. The band seems like they’ve absorbed valuable lessons from a couple of my favorite records (Andrew W.K.’s I Get Wet, Green Day’s American Idiot), particularly the art of mixing punk, prog and stadium rawk with Pentecostal fervor. Apparently, though, Fang Island simply didn’t care to learn much about the songwriting fundamentals that make those other two records so great.

Of course, not every album needs to know how to write potential hit singles to succeed, especially if it doesn’t necessarily want to be some other band’s album. In the end, Fang Island just wants to be Fang Island. I can dig that, and I’m glad this band exists.  But even so, Fang Island practically cries out for more structure and the consistent presence of a lead singer.  The more I listened, the less I heard it as a fun mostly-instrumental record with occasional outbursts of singing, and the more I heard a record that could have been great if someone hadn’t accidentally deleted the lead vocal tracks.

The band certainly has chops. Once in a while, they’ll whip out a killer riff or a high-wire transition that really shakes my blood, but those moments are dwarfed by the melody-starved spaces in between. Even the roller-coaster dynamics become less enjoyable as the album goes on, as the rises and falls grow increasingly predictable. If you were to graph the intensity levels of Fang Island over its running time, it would probably resemble a string of uniform upper-case Ms.

To Fang Island’s benefit, songwriting is a craft that a young band can hone, and the enthusiasm which they already possess in spades is something that can’t be taught. I may not have fallen for their debut, but I’ll keep an ear out for what they’ll do next. If they ever try to write their own “Carry On Wayward Son,” it’ll be downright dynamite.