Cletus is a humble, hard working individual. He spends all day tossing cinder blocks into garbage bins for The Man just so he has enough greenbacks to rent out space for his trailer. The Man, with his Ray-Ban sunglasses and black Armani suits, is always giving poor Cletus a hard time. Cletus knows there's nothing he can do. The Man is The Man. And Cletus must turn to other arenas-- the drag races, the local tavern, the bed of his pickup-- to empower himself in a world that doesn't understand.

Such is the dialectic behind Cash Money's Halos of Smoke and Fire. Like similarly- themed acts like the Jon Spencer Blues Explosion and the Delta 72, this guitar- and- drums duo takes heavy blues rock, puts a few odd time breaks in here and there, and sports a singer who thinks he's Elvis. This is not to say this is bad music-- on the contrary, there are some genuinely butt- munching (I mean this in a good way) moments on this album. The slide guitars on "Drowning Boat" slosh around in your stomach like all that steak and sauce you're eating. On "Mask of Amontiago," the band invites Dirty Three fiddler Warren Ellis and the results are pleasantly... Dirty Three-ish. One gets the feeling, though, that Cash Money is best heard in a live element, with the clinking of bottles and smacking of fists on stubbly cheeks. Somehow, this here bitta rainbow- colored plastic don't do these boys the full justice they deserve.

-Samir Khan