The second album by
the Heroine Sheiks is in-your-face angst, and one would expect no less from Shannon Selberg. As such willfully brutal post-punk goes, though, it's fairly strong. There are strong traces of funk, experimental electronic washes, and hard rock in the ominous guitar crunch. Selberg is a considerably better singer than most vocalists who play their hand at this game, letting some hints of humor and hip phrasing into his admirable lungpower. But the lyrics, as could be anticipated, are not feel-good stuff, right from the opening "Army Brat," with its couplet, "I am an army brat/My dick's a baseball bat." More fun trouble to contemplate follows, where it's the masochistic romantic obsession of "Grab the Wheel," the rants against a universally favorite target in "My Boss," and the suicidal despondence in the aftermath of a bad gig in "Mas Suicide." Actually, more songs deal with tortured romance and relationships than any other topic, though. The hidden final bits (following a few minutes of silence), with stuttering samples of an old R&B record and a lovesick phone message, don't add anything of import to the disc. ~ Richie Unterberger