Anybody who has followed 's online screeds and offstage brawls knows that ' mastermind can tend to get a little, well, defensive when he's challenged (and sometimes even when he's not), but this trait hasn't always surfaced on record -- at least not in the way he and his merry band of do on their second album, . At the very least, this bubbling blend of bizarro , rustic , fractured , and bludgeoning guitars is a finger in the eye to anyone who dared call the band a mere trifle, proof that are a band, but it's not just the sound of the record that's defiant. There's the very nature of the album's release: how it was announced to the world a week before its release when it then appeared in all formats in all retail outfits simultaneously; there's the obstinately olde-fashioned look of the art work, how the group is decked out like minstrels at a turn-of-the century carnival, or at least out of 's . Most of all, there's the overriding sense that are turning into an outlet for every passing fancy that has but will not allow himself to indulge within the confines of the tightly controlled , whether it's melodramatic Western operas like (whose concluding bridge states "any poor souls who trespass against us...will be suffer the bite or be stung dead on sight", functioning as a virtual manifesto for the band), or the slick studio trickery that makes this the biggest -related production yet. And it's hard to shake the feeling that this is the show of (as he now insists on billing himself, playing right into his ongoing fetish), as that despite the even split in songwriting and producing credits between and , and even how they trade off lead vocals, that only could have pushed to get as stubbornly, stiffly weird as they do here. Of course, that impression is not tempered by how mimics 's manic babble, particularly on the spitfire -- does follow 's gentle, rounded phrasing on the elongated melodies, but that's a subtle distinction overpowered by the force of 's concepts. And this is indeed "concepts" in plural: how cult hero is used as a touchstone for the band's via a blazing cover of or how there's an evocation of the old weird America in all the album's rambling centerpieces, or how half of the record fights against brevity, while all of it is a deathblow against the idea that are sissies. Sometimes, the group hits against that notion with a bluesy bluster, especially on the opening pair of tunes which tread a bit too closely toward conventions, sometimes their attempts to stretch out are either ill-defined ( ) or collapse under their own weight ( ), but the moments that do work -- and there are many -- make for the best music have yet made. The album truly kicks into gear with the tipsy stomp of and after that, there's a series of remarkable moments: that absurd dust-up ; which rages like '70s at their sleaziest; the rampaging ; that splendid cover that finds its heir on the steadily building and finally, the closing backwoods ballad on These songs illustrate all the ways that 's stubborn stylization pays off -- they're quite deliberate in their conflation of the traditional and modern, yet they never sound over-thought, they kick and crackle as pure kinetic music. lacked tunes like these, tunes with considerable weight, and these songs turn into a lop-sided, bottom-loaded album that's better and richer than their debut. ~ Stephen Thomas Erlewine