I was never super-into the Mcrackins back in the day; I thought they were really talented and slick-sounding, but that all that talent and slickness was being harnessed in the service of really jokey songs. And, while it’s fine to be talented and/or slick, and it’s fine to be jokey, when you combine the two (at least in a punk rock context), the two sides of the equation tend to cancel out the good aspects of each other while amplifying each other’s annoying aspects. It was kind of like if you bought a Stepmothers or Shattered Faith album and all the songs on it were about Tootsie Pop wrappers or something. It just didn’t work for me. That said, I don’t know if absence makes the heart grow fonder, if solo Spot is just un-slick/un-jokey/un-talented enough to thwart the annoyance loop (NOTE: “Un-talented” is not likely to be the case here as the guy has mad skills and what-not), or if I just finally got the shit out of my ears, but I enjoyed these ten tunes quite a bit. It’s a really solid pop punk album with the visceral feel (in some weird, unquantifiable way) of a Kiss album or something, although maybe that is just the neo-Paul-Stanley makeup exerting some manner of action-at-a-distance on me. It’s hard not to appreciate a record with a line like “roll me up like a purple Turkish rug so I don’t have to feel the pain.” Woof! BEST SONG: “Lianna.” BEST SONG TITLE: “A Dingo Ate My Baby.” FANTASTIC AMAZING TRIVIA FACT: A dingo did eat her baby.–Rev. Nørb (Mcrackins, mcrackins.com)