You'd think I'd be happy, but I'm not. In fact, I'm downright stinking miserable, because I have LFO's "Summer Girls" in my head and it's totally ruining my enjoyment of the new Sukpatch disc. As well as everything else in my life. You all know the song by now: "New Kids on the Block had a bunch of hits/ Chinese food makes me sick/ I like girls that wear Abercrombie and Fitch." When did this become worth anybody's time? I mean, Limp Bizkit may be stupid misogynistic assholes, but at least Fred Durst has an identity.

You see, on the hip-hop white- boy spectrum, you've got LFO at one extreme and the Beastie Boys at the other. Somewhere in the upper middle section, in the same general territory as Len and Soul Coughing, are Sukpatch. They don't really play hip-hop, but rather hip-hop- injected pop songs; most of Tie Down That Shiny Wave bears a distinct resemblance to "Steal My Sunshine"-- the sun- fried keyboards, hooky samples and cheap, junky grooves which make for easygoing summertime listening. But while Len still sport hip-hop poses, Sukpatch leans toward a more R&B; flavor, with R&B; vocal samples and reedy falsetto singing which I imagine is supposed to evoke Prince but more often sounds like, well... whiny white boys.

Hmm... maybe I wouldn't like Sukpatch at all if I wasn't thinking about how much I hate LFO. There's nothing on Tie Down That Shiny Wave which indicates that they could hold my attention over the length of a full album. At five songs, this EP is concise while still giving me a pretty good idea of what Sukpatch is all about. In that respect, it's at least useful. But after a few listens, its laid- back sound starts feeling forced; the vocals grate, the rhythms stiffen, and the songs seem more repetitive than before. Maybe it's just that summer's long since over and I haven't felt like cruising the boulevard in my fly hooptie in quite some time. But when summer comes around again, it'll probably be Beck instead than Sukpatch in my stereo as I roll with my homies, knocking back gin and juice like it ain't no thang... oh never mind.

-Nick Mirov