I am currently listening to perfectly dirty, bad attitude purveying, classically inspired garage rock. I like In Defense of Fort Useless by The Unsacred Hearts because, if the band at all resembles their music in person, I would want to hang out with them. In fact, they sound much cooler than any band I’ve never heard of has the right to sound, and that makes me jealous and angry.

The record notes the newish garage rock sound, but draws mostly from earlier punk and garage rock stylings. In other words, as compared to recently popular rock bands, guitars fuller sounding, drums quieter, and singer less prone to narcissistic note holding or screaming.

More to the point, this record has tales of desperation told in the puck rock vein of lyrics, while using the garage rock vein of chord shuffling and drum pounding. A direct musical comparison would rest somewhere in-between the Strokes and Seattle’s the Lights. The Unsacred Hearts are a little smoother, less syncopated, than the Lights, but much edgier than their financially stable NYC neighbors, the Strokes.

Speaking of the city, In Defense of Fort Useless makes quite a few references to life in the urban jungle. Now obviously, it has become very cool to trash the whole Brooklyn scene as played out, but let me be honest for a moment: when you’re young, it’s always cool to live in the city. Speaking from experience, as someone who turned eighteen within the last year, I can defiantly say that while that jaded thirty-something brain I have may harbor doubts about the coolness of ashcan-school art packaged for consumption by iTunes grabbing youngsters, the rest of me just wants to go to school at NYU, see shows at the Knitting Factory on the weekends, and get one of those really rad haircuts that sweeps to the side.

So what I’m really saying is: intimate, poised lyrics about smoking, drinking, and doing blow. Obviously, this is just a cover, a symbolic veil for the wordsmith’s genuine distress about the decay of urban society.

Buy the record if you thought this review was witty or if you want to move with me to Williamsburg.