Snooty Garbagemen

Garage rock purists might rejoice at the presence of the Snooty Garbagemen. They appeal to a slightly older garage sensibility, before the cherubic sweetness of Burger Records, crystallized in early-2000s Detroit bands like the Piranhas and Clone Defects. The Texan trio's eponymous debut feels unwieldy and fetid, proudly brainless, and committed to the primacy of a punchy rhythm section and seething guitar riffs.

Snooty Garbagemen's opener is a statement of intent: a minute and a half of rollicking drums and a careening riff that renders the usual vocabulary of chords and strumming inadequate. Lots of rock records use fidelity and effects as an off-putting hide, but few make guitars sound so unnatural and ingratiating at once: they are warm and full, but in a gross way. The guitar tone feels less like something picked out on steel strings than some mutant extension of singer Tom Triplett's rancorous vocals.

The only way for Snooty Garbagemen to feel any woozier, you might think, is for it to go backwards, which happens on "Cigarette Juice", an album highlight. The Sandlot's classic tilt-a-whirl puke scene is set to the Champs' sinister and weirdly vindictive instrumental "Tequila"; "Cigarette Juice" could soundtrack the remake for regressing adults, which would inevitably star Johnny Knoxville.

That sort of lumpen idiocy is a good look for Snooty Garbagemen, a trio drunk on the gospel of I ain't gonna wanna whose lyrics reflect the hostility of a petulant brat. Triplett is hysterically incredulous on "Superman" and exhausted with everything "lame" and "so fucking dumb" on "I Quit". "I Can't Find My Keys" features choice lines like, "This happens every morning/ This happens all too frequently," whinnied out with such feverish despair that they teeter into comedy. Triplett's Cro-Magnon missives attack relatable, quotidian annoyances with the outsized rage that we're all compelled to repress in polite society.

"Don't Know to Play Guitar" is the big stroke of irony. Triplett hails from OBN IIIs and Real Energy, among many other bands, drummer Josh Wolf plays guitar in the Secret Prostitutes (and dons a massive "Rock N Roll Nightmare" chest tattoo), and recently-departed bassist Manie Chen is likewise steeped in Texan punk circles. Snooty Garbagemen is a venerable power-trio, attuned to one another's rhythmic lurches and assaultive physicality with a nuance that's unique to journeyman players. It's what makes this fairly straight-ahead rock'n'roll full-length engaging from start-to-finish. That ensemble feel, rather than its air of ferocity, is also what distinguishes Snooty Garbagemen from its peers, past and present. And nowhere is plain proficiency more evident than in Triplett's guitar solos, which stand out as rather beautiful and inspired against their ugly backdrop, like some sort of uncannily resilient butterfly flitting up from a trash heap.