On their debut release, Let's Cut The Crap And Hook Up Later On Tonight, the Philadelphia, Pennsylvania- based quartet, Marah, backs up the album title of the year with one of those records that sounds like it was recorded at one kick-ass party. Like the Replacements' best work, the album is a bus barreling down a mountain road; a train wreck waiting to happen; a drunk about to be sick. From the Mardi Gras celebration "Fever" to the bottle solo on "Baby Love" to the bagpipes on "Limb", Marah plays with the unpredictable abandon on which rock n' roll thrives.

The banjo- driven rockabilly of "Eventually Rock", the revival gospel soul of "Boat" and the Exile On Main Street- era Stones barnburner, "Head On" leave one wondering whether these guys aren't actually from Philadelphia, Mississippi. But the band's obvious Mummers influence, the introduction to "Rain Delay", and the way "Formula, Cola, Dollar Draft" finds a side of Springsteen the Boss himself lost long before Born To Run proclaim that the only south in these guys is South Philly.

The airy beauty of the slide guitar on "Phantom Eyes" and the folky dirge of "For The Price Of A Song" will have some billing Marah as "the next big alt-country thing." But don't be mistaken. Let's Cut The Crap And Hook Up Later On Tonight is at once intelligent, thoughtful, raucous and fun. It can only be classified as great rock n' roll.

-Neil Lieberman