Wau y Los Arrrghs-Todo Roto LP (Slovenly Records, 2013)

Franco was still in power when this sorta rock was peaking in the States, but it was worth the wait for the Spanish version. Wau y los Arrghs, unlike a lot of the total trash I review, can write real songs with identifiable segments that don't blur into each other. Hell, I bet this wasn't even recorded on garageband! Maybe in a real studio!

This LP is nothing but rave-up '60s garage bangers: one after another, they're the sorta jams American high school bands played at mixers before the fucking Beatles released that heaping pile of shit known as Sgt. Pepper's and convinced everyone that endless ragas are somehow pleasurable. High school bands shoulda stuck with this organ-and-guitar based melodic party music, man.

"Fruta Podrida" perfectly encapsulates the Wau sound: the singer howls in a controlled way, like Wolfman Jack. The guitarist busts out vamp after vamp, the organist trills away mightily, and the rhythm section strives to keep up. "Tres Cabezas" gets even nastier: nuthin' but a rat-voiced vocal line snarled above a manic organ cluster, with a weird lilting beat somewhere in the background.

If you've always liked the Nuggets collection more than anything the Beatles ever produced (like me), you'll love this. This woulda been on my Best-of-2013 lists if I had heard it last year.

Listen to, and buy a vinyl copy of, the LP here!