Me too! That album was the perfect loud office antidote. Can't wait to hear the new one...

David, I agree with you surpringly often about music. My office-mate brought the first CYHSY! disc into work when it first came out, and I was immediately hooked. We have a huge and varied music collection at our office, but I keep coming back to that one. It's infectious and poppy and somehow doesn't interfere with the day's business. I'm looking forward to hearing the new one.

How did it pass the 'no lyrics while working' rule?

Hurrah, thanks for the commiseration. Still, I don't want anyone to think my appreciation of the band's record as "work music" is in any way belittling or dismissive. It's a weird fact of the music—I've heard from a number of people, from writers to painters to whatever the folks in Gurldoggie's office do, who found the first CYHSY record uniquely and simultaneously soothing and invigorating. My guess is that it's due to the band's marriage of almost pornographically gorgeous melodies to those simple, insistent, Feelies-esque rhythms, which sometimes get such a groove going it feels like music from another continent.

Blah, blah, blah, yay for them, now I'll go check out the new record...

Explorer: That's part of the miracle of it. I find the lyrics no more or less distracting than Thelonius Monk's mini-grunts and humming..

I don't love Some Loud Thunder as much as their first CD, but I expect that it will grow on me with a few more listens.

BTW, if you pre-order the CD from Insound, you can download all of the tracks as mp3s (approximately) right away.

The lyrics aren't a problem because they are nearly totally incomprehensible. I like how their forceful, loud live show contrasts with the recorded sounds.

Wait, do all you people's copy of their first album have a different singer than the one I've heard? That's the only explanation I can think of.