I'd been trying to decide whether or not I was going to say nasty things about Love Love Love, even before I listened to it, when it came in the mail and I envisioned writing this very review. First of all, when I saw Glass Candy, they were truly uninteresting, and worse, the guitar player was annoying as hell. In 1973, Mick Ronson and Rod Stewart had wonderful hair. People in 2003 who make their hair look like that are idiots. Then the second strike was the look of the record: superslick. But that's not a criticism – it's more a personal thing. Maybe it's the assumed names (Ida No, Johnny Jewel) – the names are a little too perfect. Maybe if they were, like, Idaho Potato and Johnny Jewelry Mart, I'd like them better. But the flawless recreation of the No New York aesthetic is overkill, especially since the record is a meticulously constructed mix of Rough Trade-ish dance punk, "dark" atmospheres, a deconstructed Stones cover, and straight-up '80s hard rockisms – everything a cool kid could want these days. Too much.

So I mulled all these things over, and then I thought, well, it's not like these guys are some huge band with lots of money coming in. They just want to play music, so they've got this hip label, Troubleman Unlimited, behind them, and they're packaged for the big time – why say mean things about them? They're probably really nice and would be hurt by scathing remarks coming from some faded Mission District hipster dinkface like me. Then I listened to the record and realized the music was shit to boot, and in the last song, for the finale, they even ripped off "25 or 6 to 4" by Chicago. Chicago?! God help us. I guess if you need to dig into Chicago's smelly old pockets for inspiration then, well, you got bigger problems than me, so my final decision was to say, hey, this is a cool band that sounds like a cross between Pat Benatar and Suicide. It's like no wave, except you can play it at frat parties and no one will even notice it's on. Glass Candy play Thurs/15, Cafe du Nord, S.F. (415) 861-5016. (Mike McGuirk)

Verbena
La musica negra (Capitol)

What with all of that era's rock suicides, overdoses, and deaths, the early '90s still seem a little too close to comfortably replicate. Birmingham, Ala.'s Verbena, however, have made their name by doing just that: on 1999's Into the Pink, Scott Bondy did Kurt Cobain so well – dirty blond do, guttural yelps, gun obsession – that Nirvana comparisons were inevitable even if Dave Grohl hadn't produced the album. Unlike other Nirvana-bes Silverchair and Bush, though, Verbena transcended mere derivation, and when Bondy howled, "My baby my baby my baby got shot!," it was hard to believe he wasn't plagued by some of the same demons that haunted Cobain.

On La musica negra, Verbena's third record and first without guitarist-vocal foil Anne Marie Griffin, Bondy still likes to sing along and likes to shoot his guns, but now he knows what it means to imitate his fallen hero, and he's moving on. Less Cobain-conscious this time, he's finding his own voice in the rowdy, blues rock bombast of songs like "I, Pistol," "It's Alright, It's OK (Jesus Told Me So)," and the weepy, prom-night nostalgia of "All the Saints." Like Into the Pink, the result is an album that may not be the most original sound around, but it shouts at the devil with a ferocity that puts much of modern rock radio to shame. Verbena perform Thurs/15, Slim's, S.F. (415) 255-0333. (Jimmy Draper)

Pest
Necessary Measures (Ninja Tune)

Cruise the U.K. radio waves and randomly take some samples. Feed these to five young southeast Londoners with backgrounds ranging from classical to techno to hip-hop. Have them hash out ideas in numerous live gigs before locking them in a studio. Open the doors and out bursts Pest's debut album, Necessary Measures.

Pest's influences – breakbeats, jazz guitar, '60s soundtracks – may not be all that unusual, but the direction they take them certainly is. This is anything but loops drizzled with bizarre samples. Instead we're treated to a band well versed in the diction of dance music that are willing to bring together Afrobeat and big beat, garage rock and U.K. garage. The opening track, "Chicken Spit," rides a lighthearted, pop guitar line over a hip-hop beat while strangling a muted trumpet and slicing up strings. "Slap on Tap" matches blasted horns to a squealing guitar and a trap set banging out 2-step, only to break down into a drunken recollection of a salsa. "St. Pest" finds a careless piano interlude leading into a stuttered orchestral sweep, then free-form pluckings of a thumb piano, while a monotone Casio beat ties it all together.

Sometimes the cultural collision gets the best of itself, as on "Dr Umz," which features a truly annoying xylophone-run sample and an utterly forgettable rap. "Moody Hoe" also treads close to the beats-plus-soundtrack samples aesthetic of other Ninja Tune acts like Herbaliser. Yet, on the whole, Necessary Measures not only breaks new ground but also rocks out hard along the way. Their music might reflect the insanity of postmodernism, but like any great madness, Pest have an element of true genius. (Peter Nicholson)

Daniel Johnston
Fear Yourself (Gammon)