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In an era when you can practically take every album into the critic's version of the CSI laboratory (complete with Zero 7 playing in the background) in order to determine its exact points of reference and the width of its bandwagon tread, it's refreshing to hear something like Welcome's Sirs,...

By Terry Sawyer

May 10, 2007

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In an era when you can practically take every album into the critic's version of the CSI laboratory (complete with Zero 7 playing in the background) in order to determine its exact points of reference and the width of its bandwagon tread, it's refreshing to hear something like Welcome's Sirs, so fuck-all off the mark and on point. Although the Seattle four-piece has clearly taken ragged cues from the Nuggets compilations, borrowing the best tendencies of '60s psych to drop a melody through the bottom of a gutbucket, there's so much more here, including trace elements of Mudhoney, Sonic Youth and the Pixies' perfect-trash-rock-candy singles. Meanwhile, tunes like "Bunky" throw a Cocteau Twins curve of beautiful female vocals encased in ice noise. If Sirs has a recurring presence, it's one of coarse spontaneity and a relentless sense that Welcome creates these glorious messes with hard work and harder luck. 'Lo-fi' might seem like a fitting term for it all, but such a toss-off adjective does little justice to a band with this level of talent and flippant boundlessness.

Terry Sawyer

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