Last July, I got to speak with Sonny Smith on my radio show. He mentioned he had just finished a new album that wouldn't be out until the following January or February, and that he had retooled the band along the way to record it.

How did he describe the style the band was putting out?

"Minutemen crossed with CAN"

Well, shit.

And here I sit all these months later listening to "Talent Night at the Ashram" with that crossbreed in mind. Sonny also made a point of saying this was the weirdest album he felt he had recorded yet.

What Sonny may have been too modest to point out is that he still manages to pull the most beautiful, quirky hooks out of this band and the album they produced together, and from every instrument in every song. The drums. The drums have big dumb hooks. The vocals, of course, the vocals. The inane keyboard riffs. And all anchored by the pop riffs of Sonny's guitar.

Cheap Extensions was the first single and still gives me that "furrowed brow jamming-out" look: