[music] SHUDDER TO THINK - 50,000 BC (Epic)

Principle: Studio work can't usually hide a song's flaws. If you don't think so, I'll give you four-to-one odds you've just read too many record reviews, as opposed to actually disagreeing with me. What it can do is erase flaws, as with doctored vocal performances, or create an entirely new arena in which for the song to be good or not, as with the producer-heavy creative balance in most current radio hip-hop.

Or, if you aren't lucky, it exposes flaws. The magic of music -- the incomprehensible process by which a sequence of beats become a whole just by being placed in rhythm together -- breaks more easily than most people realize. You do NOT want your song to become just a collection of notes, or of words. And so you don't always want it smoothed out or buffed into shininess.

I actually can't remember now which recent fave band of mine I saw compared to Shudder To Think... I think it was TV On The Radio, but whoever it was, it sent me to investigate. I hear TVOTR in places, anyway: soulful vocals over prickly rock. In other places I hear the gleaming thud of a band on their sixth album in danger not of ceasing to exist, but of failing to.