Hi-Fi Sci-Fi.

So smart and funny they could pass for American Kinks, this New Jersey guitar band wears its heart on its collective sleeve with a shamelessness beyond any upstanding Englishperson. In "Work for Food" lead singer John Easdale, singing as himself, is pushing a shopping cart with everything he owns down the street ("The records never sold and that was that"); he tells you exactly what's in it. He's pathetic, a joke, not quite heartrending, and completely believable. It's a great idea. But "Shadowless Heart" is a great song: slow, cool, disturbing, knowing, near death, like Social Distortion without the blood and guts--without the distortion. I play it over and over, and I still can't tell: "You got a shadowless heart," Easdale sings, but is that good or bad?