Today's featured shit

This album is fucking awesome. If you like female-fronted semi-punk bands, this is the way to go. The songs are all short and leave you wanting more. The recording is a little raw, which makes perfect sense for this act. They are amazing here. “Buzz Buzz” starts off and knocks you down, and then all of a sudden it is “Afternoon,” which has great whistling and male backing vocals. And then there is “Hokay,” which is what Elida would always tell me when we worked together at Arby’s. She’d also call me “Jose.”

“Earthquakes” has that mid-’90s up-and-down feel, although I admit that the vocals sound as if they belong on another song. Maybe it’s like that milk in the glass bottle at Whole Foods with a yellow lid. Maybe I need just a wee bit of pasteurization in my music.

“True Story” is short enough (49 seconds) that it might be one. It’s fun. So is “Talk Shit, Get Hit.” The songs are all really short. So is this review.

This album is precious. It has a song called “Tucheses and Nenes.” What’s not to like? (This song really gets them going on the dance floor by the way. You can tell just by listening.)

There are two singers, one male and one female. The female songs are more amusing, but they are all good. “Mirror Mirror” mentions toilet paper. I bet it’s the two-ply kind.

“Meat Street” has accordion out the ass. It’s a lot of fun. You wish you could sing along, but the words aren’t in English, so you just drink more beer. “Tell Her You Love Her” should be covered by They Might Be Giants.

“Citizen Boris” asks questions that prospective U.S. citizens have to answer. They answer them too. Let them vote! “Chervona Ruta” puts a little more emphasis on the female singer, and it is something you would hear, perhaps, while hanging out with wild and crazy guys, while you all scheme ways to grab some great big American breasts.

Slightly sleepy and with a dreamy voice up front, Joker’s Daughter are another mellow indie pop band. Helena Costas as a great voice, even if the songs do not exhibit overly strong pipes. Quality is always better than quantity anyway.

“Go Walking” has all kinds of accompaniment and seems to be telling a great story. There’s a little more effort felt here. Sometimes it almost feels that the band is too clever for its medium. It’s only rock ‘n’ roll, after all.

When properly metered, however, you can find some genius. “The Last Laugh” has an ambient feel and is a departure from the other tracks on the album. It may not appear in a club anytime soon, but it does provide some welcome synths and a fun perspective for fans of One Dove, of all bands.

“Under the Influence of Jaffa Cakes” is the rock song that puts it all together. It brings to mind wandering minstrels with Fleetwood Mac melodies. “Jelly Belly” is another story song and is easier to follow than the others. It also has some hidden keyboard stuff. It must be the Danger Mouse influence. Cor!

“Cake and July” is good for fans of Dungeons and Dragons. Maybe they can play this in the background while they take turns letting everyone hit each other.

“The Bull Bites Back” also tells a good story and should make you want to sit patiently on your yarn loops.

The tracks certainly don’t sound all the same. “No Home” sounds like a Yeah Yeah Yeahs ripoff. “Lo and Behold” has nothing magnetic about it, but it does have that girl group sound I love, whether it’s The Kirby Grips or The Jolenes. “Subject” is more in the Yeah Yeah Yeahs/Pretty Girls Make Graves vein.

“The Rules” is a live song from 2004 in Los Angeles. It has harmonica. Definitely the honky-tonk sass of some other generation. Finally is “I Heard Tell,” which is a live recording from New York City in 2008. It also has the Yeah Yeah Yeahs sound, even more than the others. I guess it is pretty clear what they are trying to do here. They could pick a worse band to emulate; that’s for sure.

Stella Schindler’s list of 11 songs runs a bit long, but her above-average voice brings to mind an evening of making your own pasta sauce with your girlfriend. It’s clearly a bonding activity, but when Ragu is $2 a jar, isn’t there a better way?

The music reminds one of early 2000s female-front mellow indie rock, such as the Softies’ rockier stuff. The lead singer is an octave lower than the Softies, but it has vocal range, and sometimes that’s more important.

“Broken Glass” and “Distant Hum” are slower tracks but are simple and efficient. “Simon Montgomery” sounds like a Lisa Loeb song. “Death Valley” is about as country as that Jack in the Box ad, which is to say it has midgets and is not as entertaining as you’d like it to be.

The tracks have a natural progression to them, so three cheers to Schindler to putting thought into this. The country parts are definitely entrenched in the middle tracks. You’re then listening to a waltz called “Walk a While.” This has the best singing on the album. Yeah, I still call it “singing.”