If Only for the Hatchery

Bubbling into being with the not quite normal guitar noises starting "Z Is for Zovirax," If Only for the Hatchery inhabits a pleasantly strange middle ground between spare, catchy songs and just damaged enough psych-art ravings. It's not really '60s/'70s revivalist per se; indeed, there's more an air of the crisp and catchy '80s underground rock scene in the South, say the dB's or Let's Active, being used to serve different ends. The unexpected percussion on "Snack of Toes" — bells, oddly miked and mixed drums, and more — or the mixed low and distorted but still audible screams and cackles on "Manmannouth" certainly aren't out to re-create first-album Byrds, while the CD-glitch chop-up of "Meet Cute" is definitely a product of now rather than then. Arguably, there's a kissing-cousin sense that could see Wingtip Sloat and Guided By Voices share a stage together, but if Robert Pollard would just want to get drunk while reliving the Who's glory days, the Wingtip Sloat trio prefers something a little more intimate and less concerned about the classic rock dream. Songs like "Part of Three" have an almost summery, wistful air — check the vocal harmonies here, one of the band's subtler strengths — while still not quite sounding like something that could easily become a left-field college radio hit. Vocals calmly sing about — as much as randomly pronounce — this and that, and sometimes the results can be truly bemusing: thus, the female vocals gently but clearly singing "Do it to me, condom girl" on "Take the Safeway Back." The end result is what happens when a band knows that it can do more than just create reasonable-enough indie rock songs for a built-in audience. As such, it makes perfect sense that "Holiday B*****b" samples the unexpurgated version of a Monty Python skit — and then proceeds to get weirder and funnier from there.