He's Drunk

For their second album, Columbus, Ohio’s all-woman trio build on the basic emotional framework of their 1987 debut Plus, Also, Too, improving their musicianship and developing a band chemistry that allows them to pull apart the Hombres’ garage-rock anthem “Let It All Hang Out” and gently interpret Felice and Boudleaux Bryant’s “Rocky Top” with equal skill, as their own brutal originals focus on ways to wring the most emotion from singer Marcy Mays’ incredibly fragile and seductively unsure voice. “Green Beer” is their strongest composition to date, but “Breaker Breaker,” “For Your Sister” and “I Feel Your Pain” are plaintive, unpretentious hard-edged pop songs with their roots firmly in punk rock’s do-it-yourself ethos. The harmonies remain tough and deliberately strained. The guitars ring out in unrefined glee. The drums pummel down the highway. Over the ensuing years, the band would learn to better expose their inherent tunefulness, but at this point it was all about capturing the energy of the moment, which they certainly did.