For someone who owns a lot of records and is supposed to really like music, I really hate music. As of the last couple weeks anyway. I missed a concert I really wanted to go see. I don’t really have anyone to blame for that except myself, seeing as I was asleep on the bathroom floor when my ride showed up. Anyway, the weird thing is that I wound up not regretting it all that much. That’s the weird thing. By the way, I am incredibly superficial. So when I did my fortnightly reckoning of how fucking sweet I am, I felt like I should have been at least 10 to 15 points less fucking sweet than last week. But when I finished inspecting my sweet ass, I was actually much cooler than I was two Mondays ago.

You take away sex from George Costanza and he turns into a genius. You take music away from me and I become George Costanza.

The aforementioned being aforementioned, I probably shouldn’t be reviewing any records this week, since I woke up this morning and the first thing I did, before putting my pants on or looking to see what time it was, that first instinctive thing was to rummage sleepily through my mp3 playlist for a little ditty called “Waving My Dick In the Wind.” These are not the words of a legitimate music critic.

But I’m reviewing music anyway. I’m reviewing World of Gold by “Chicago punks” the Nerves, brought to you by our friends at Thrill Jockey.

Review #1 (before listening to album):

These guys are trying to be an American Supergrass. Same faded old-timey cover tableau as In It For the Money. And they’re kind of ugly, although still light-years from eclipsing the Ugly Sun that is Gaz Coombes & Associates.

Review #2 (after listening to album):

These guys actually are an American Supergrass. In the exact same way that Supergrass is a relatively straightforward recapitulation of most of the good things about British rock, so are the Nerves to classic North American punking. According to me, they’re just plain old rock, which is fucking great if you ask me. While World of Gold isn’t quite up my alley, I see absolutely no reason why it couldn’t be up yours.

The next time you see me, I probably won’t be listening to the Nerves. But don’t let that stop you from buying it. They seem like nice guys.