Friends Forever are a three-piece idiot-rock band that drive around the country playing shows outside of venues, from inside their van. Killball is a concept record, with the theme revolving around a futuristic game based on football, only way more violent.

The first song on the album is called "Carnisaur vs. Unicorn," and it's basically a theme song for some afternoon cartoon show that exists only in the minds of the players, identified as Rudy Bloody, Wizard 333, and Cunt. The song is simple and evocative. You can just see the Carnisaur (whatever that is) flying through the air and flexing its muscles, with movement lines à la Speed Racer denoting the flow of air rushing past it. The unicorn stamps its hoof and jabs with its horn as the two get ready to duke it out. Totally awesome. Song number three is my favorite. It's called "Linebacker Blitz" and has tribal drumming and chanted grunts instead of singing. It's like some naked, animalistic high school marching band. "3 Peat (March to the Lockerroom)" refers to the idea of a team winning the Super Bowl three years in a row. The song itself is another instrumental synth, drum, and guitar plodder, and this is where the record goes downhill.

The rest of the songs are good, but they're all variations on this clunky kids' thing. Friends Forever are best experienced live, and judging from their hilarious self-titled documentary, they seem like such good guys that it's hard to be completely objective here. Personally, I think that considering the fantastic cover art, the overall thought process that went into making it, and the fact that Killball is Friends Forever's 139th record (according to their Web site), it's an achievement of superhuman proportions, or at the very least pretty good. I would encourage all of my friends, and even strangers I meet on the street, to buy it. (Mike McGuirk)

Various artists
Under the Influence: Morrissey (DMC)

Though packaged to resemble a new Morrissey album, Under the Influence: Morrissey is the CD equivalent of a mix tape; it features favorite tracks from the infamous man's vinyl collection. The Smiths' album and single covers are a gallery of nonmusical influences, Morrissey's lyrics toy with the ties between fan and star, and he's used his notoriety to proclaim devotion to other cult personalities. These facets, which make him an ideal person to inaugurate the Under the Influence series, also mean some of his choices are familiar: T. Rex, Klaus Nomi, and Patti Smith all make the expected appearances.

But there are surprises. The Cats' bizarre rocksteady version of "Swan Lake" confirms that Morrissey's infamous "Reggae is vile" statement was made with taste buds firmly in cheek. Sixties girl-pop gems are remarkably absent; that subgenre's sole, and unlikely, representative is Diana Dors, Britain's answer to Mamie van Doren. Instead, rockabilly-tinged obscurities dominate. Most wed pedestrian music to whimsically twisted themes: Charlie Feathers's "One Hand Loose" is a semi-gripping ode to masturbation, while Jaybee Wasden's "De Castrow" (set in Cuba, not San Francisco) finds joy in being homicidal and cowardly. Criminality and love keep getting mixed up with each other.

Morrissey fans who bitch and moan – a favorite pastime – that they've been hoodwinked into buying an album that doesn't contain his voice should shut up and savor the man's words: Under the Influence's liner notes offer some of the most passionately stylish writing, let alone music criticism, I've read in years. According to Morrissey, Nico's voice is "the sound of a body being thrown out the window," while Sparks' "lyrical take on sex cries out like prison wall carvings." And then there are the tossed-off observations: "Every day life is troubled by the inevitable advancing darkness, where our only certainties are pitiless decay and the final port of Death. Our days are stacked with pretended joys. But, so what." Indeed. (Johnny Ray Huston)

Headhunters
Evolution Revolution (Basin Street)

Miles Davis may have been the primary architect of fusion, but former Davis pianist Herbie Hancock reaped larger rewards by taking a different approach, one that resulted in fusion's first gold LP, 1973's Head Hunters (Columbia). Whereas Davis relied on loose rock rhythms, the keyboardist fortified the fusion formula by grounding it in the tighter syncopations of funk. The magic ingredient in Hancock's recipe was East Bay grease in the persons of bassist Paul Jackson and percussionist Bill Summers, with Oakland drummer Mike Clark replacing Harvey Mason shortly after the release of the band's first album.

Jackson now lives in Japan, Summers in New Orleans, and Clark in New York, yet the old Headhunters rhythm team managed to reunite for a 16-song trip titled Evolution Revolution. It's all over the map stylistically, from a straight-ahead bop tribute to Woody Shaw, on which trumpeter Nicholas Payton and alto saxophonist Donald Harrison trade choruses, to a blues shuffle sung by George Porter Jr. Two additional original Headhunters – Mason and tenor saxophonist Bennie Maupin – turn up on the extensive guest list. There are detours into smooth jazz and Afropop, but the main focus is funk – and few groups lay it on thicker than the Headhunters. The Headhunters open for War Sun/17, Sigmund Stern Grove, S.F. (415) 252-6252. (Lee Hildebrand)

New Amsterdams
Worse for the Wear (Vagrant)

If you believe his press, Matthew Pryor, best known as the singer for the Get Up Kids, is happy. He's got a new house, a new daughter, and a new album, Worse for the Wear, the third full-length with his "other" band, the New Amsterdams. But happiness doesn't always make for the best music, though the fact that most of these tracks verge into the dreaded "adult contemporary" category does not mean they're bad songs. Pryor's lyrics take the listener on a tour of emotional estrangement, vices alluded to but never really spelled out, problems with honesty, and – to those familiar with the Kids, this won't be new – abandonment issues.

Worse for the Wear veers into greatness at times, especially when the jaded edge shows beneath the youthful vulnerability in Pryor's slightly nasal voice. "I'll trust as far as I can spit," he sings on "Hover Near Fame," a standout track and a sardonic commentary on supermodel chasers. "Somewhere the novelty wore thin, when every city I was in, there was an actor soaked in gin with an entourage." "Asleep at the Wheel" comes off like the indie version of Merle Haggard's "White Line Fever." "We never will make load-in if the ephedrine don't kick in," Pryor offers over deftly plucked banjo riffs.