[mp3] This, I think, is a two-spike problem.

Stiffs, Inc. - "Quick, Watson!" (mp3)

Stiffs, Inc. would have done infinitely better had they existed fifteen years earlier or ten years later, when nervous, sharp punk rock had/has more of an audience. Their concept: they played at being post-Victorian blackguards of some kind (grave robbers? confidence men?) while writing panicky three-chord songs with a mishmash of anachronisms in them. This one depicts Sherlock Holmes in a drug frenzy, blaming himself for Moriarty's death at Reichenbach Falls while trying to rationalize away his own addiction. Stiffs, Inc. had all the menace missing from the 00s revivalists tilling some of the same ground like the Futureheads and Bloc Party; sadly, they broke up after two albums, with one member going on to, uh, business school.

[Only a dollar plus shipping from Amazon for this album, 1995's Nix Nought Nothing.]