Hlllyh

seriously. its just ace from start to finish. Highlights are Run To Your Grave and Pwnd. I'm useless at reviews as well, so just buy it.

These fellows' stock is high at the moment with their `hilarious' Christian Bale ranting mash-up, which whatever your take on blog-bred opportunism, is not here present. Most of The Mae Shi's tracks weigh in at little more than 2 minutes, with the title track, `Hillyh' at 4, and an auspicious 11-minute punk-funk peak in `Kingdom Come'.

Their madcap alt. rock is quite beguiling, and opens with a pleasant-enough 2-minute acoustic and handclap folky number, despite their best efforts to ruin it all with a 45 second hand-clap sponsored freak-out. To give `Hillyh', its dues, it is an agreeable indie-rock number, but more interestingly allows for the first indications of what is to come to seep out onto the canvass.

`Book Of Numbers' and `Young Marks' run into one another like two halves of the same track, the former is Americana influenced indie-rock and quite, quite listenable, the latter vocodes happily to create an emo sounding track, only with more bleeping, which calls to mind Klaxons remixing My Chemical Romance.

`Party Politics' sounds as shouty as `At The Drive In' but poppier and with a dark looming of emo in the near falsetto vocals, though they'd never admit it. `I Get (Almost) Everything I Want' looks emo in its parenthetical title, but actually reverts to album opener in its folk rock atmospherics, repetitive vocals and simple acoustics, drums and cymbals.

This is an album suitable for those with ADD, and will give those over the age of fifteen a headache with its shifting tempos and mix of indie rock and jumpy keyboards. It is recorded at a furious pace, and is based in American Roots. The tracks however in their variety seem very alien from their forefathers, even in its language. 'Pwnd' is a crowd-splitting example.

Just as Black Lips are clatteringly lo-fi, so are The Mae Shi, but to put the two in the same bracket would be to liken Black Sabbath and Tenacious D. One is serious but to the point of parody, and one is parody personified.

The Mae Shi are knowingly oiksome, and embrace quirky aside and humour, but for all the shuddering with which I now ought to be convulsing, they do for the most part manage to pull it out of their odd-shaped bag. It's just that behind their mostly esoteric adventure, there lacks a decent grounding in sustainability, one masked in an ethic that allows for zeitgeistial and questionable style to triumph over substance. It is with a distinct whiff of justice then that these lucky chancers will most likely find themselves in the bargain bin for years to come. Is their name a question? If so, 'denied' is my reply. Here's to the next celebrity-blunder bandwagon boys!