My name is Kristin and I can admit that I have a problem. Last week I was standing in line at the record store with a copy of Two Dollar Guitar's Weak Beats and Lame-Ass Rhymes in one hand and my Discover Card in the other. I got off the line to put it back. Why not spend money I don't have on more of a sure thing? I don't own the Stones' Sticky Fingers, do I really need a copy of Weak Beats? After all, the title doesn't exactly promise much. Regardless, the moment of doubt passed and I was getting back in line to pay when a tall skinny kid with dirty hair handed me a piece of paper, which I have reproduced here for you.

The Twelve Steps, from The Big Book of SY Anonymous

1. We admitted we were powerless over Sonic Youth members' side projects-- that our lives had become unmanageable.

2. Came to believe that a Power greater than ourselves could restore us to sanity.

3. Made a decision to turn our will and our lives over to the care of God as we understood Him.

4. Made a searching and fearless moral inventory of ourselves, and of our record collections.

5. Admitted to God, to ourselves, and to another human being the exact nature of our wrongs: Two Dollar Guitar, Free Kitten, Male Slut, the Velvet Monkeys, Mosquito, Foot, Mirror and Dash, Lee Ranaldo's spoken word and noise projects, and endless "so-called-import" recordings of Thurston Moore and his friends improvising with a four-track in various people's studios, apartments and bathrooms.

6. Were entirely ready to have God remove all these defects of character. We would not flinch when we saw our old defects selling for $4.99 in a used bin.

7. Humbly asked Him to remove our shortcomings.

8. Made a list of all persons we had harmed, and became willing to make amends to them all.

9. Made direct amends to such people wherever possible, except when to do so would injure them or others.

10. Continued to take personal inventory as the members of Sonic Youth all continued to be wildly prolific, and when we were wrong, promptly admitted it.

11. Sought through prayer and meditation to improve our conscious contact with God as we understood Him, praying only for knowledge of His will for us and the power to carry that out.

12. Having had a spiritual awakening as the result of those steps we tried to carry this message to others, and to practice these principles in all our affairs.

I bought Weak Beats, anyway. Two Dollar Guitar's last outing, Train Songs, is still in heavy rotation on my stereo-- that pretty instrumental rock album never harmed anyone.

The dirty, skinny kid took me into a small room and left me with "The 12 Steps" and Weak Beats to sit, think, and listen to the album briefly. He told me that I wasn't alone, and also said that when I was ready, he'd be waiting outside.

I sat down in the little room and opened the disc's brightly collaged digipak to check out the liner notes. It looked promising-- Two Dollar Guitar's usual line-up of Tim Foljahn, Dave Motamed and Steve Shelley is pepper with guest appearances. This time, artists like Nels Cline, Carla Bozulich (of Scarnella, and formerly, the Geraldine Fibbers), Christina Rosenvinge, and Smokey Hormel (who plays guitar with Tom Waits and Beck) also help out. I decided to give it a listen...

Nels Cline lends delicate, repetitive guitar work to the first track, "Solitaire." A few sparse chords set the tone for Foljahn's haunting vocals before the drums kick in and lift up both the pace and tone of the song, building until you could almost say that it "rocks." As it turns out, it's a high point of the album, as is "T-shirt," where Foljahn's melodic crooning works well over Shelley's driving but not intrusive drumming. The second track, "Kilroy," sounds just enough like a James Taylor song to make me uncomfortable. "White Ape," the requisite "everyone's gotta have one" Casio bossanova-beat track, isn't that bad. But there are a couple of very average dark ballads that don't stand out. The album does includes some beautifully-arranged songs, as well as a wide range of excellent performances, but the overall product feels a bit clunky in comparison to the exquisite textures of Train Songs.

After listening, I left the room and slipped by the dirty, skinny kid. He'd fallen asleep just outside the door. I didn't want to bother explaining that although Weak Beats and Lame-Ass Rhymes wasn't exactly what I'd hoped for, I wasn't ready for recovery. His abandoned Velvet Monkeys record was staring at me from the used bin, anyway.

-Kristin Sage Rockermann