Y'know, I'm a college graduate. Just barely. I graduated without particular distinction from a large state university, thanks to a system I developed back in high school. It was a system that I thought worked pretty well back then, but have since come to regret. I skipped every other class meeting, didn't turn in my work, and then handed in a final paper that, while mediocre on its own, garnered me a B in the class, based on the fact that it was better than any of the other papers submitted. I skated through, and counted on the poor writing of my peers to keep me off academic probation. It seemed like a good idea at the time.

Evidently, the contributors to Guitarrorists have adopted a similar approach to their work for this record. A series of instrumental guitar pieces, the record finds more than twenty well- known musicians stepping out of their full band environments to craft more intimate solo pieces. I'm guessing that was the idea, anyway, though the final product has little in the way of either intimacy or craft.

The line-up sure looks promising: Steve Albini, J Mascis, Dean Wareham, Wayne Coyne, Kurt Ralske, three fourths of Sonic Youth, plus a host of other only slightly less familiar names. The promise fades fast though. Nearly all of these tracks feel tossed off, like their creators knew that they didn't have to try too hard to come up with something that would sound good. Most of these songs are pretty good, too, at least in the sense that they're not by Britney Spears or Third Eye Blind. But few of them distinguish themselves from the work of the bands these folks hail from: Kurt Ralske's track sounds like an instrumental version of about eight different Ultra Vivid Scene songs, and Steve Albini's song sounds like the Cliff's Notes to Big Black's entire catalog.

More distressing, though, is the way most of this stuff is indistinguishable from the stuff around it. There's enough backwards guitar on this record to choke something much bigger than a horse. Like a yak maybe. And most of the artists involved seem to have mistaken aimless atonality for experimentation. The worst of it, amazingly, comes from Kim Gordon, who sounds so much like a teenager locked up in her bedroom practicing the electric guitar that I was sure I could hear her parents in the background, screaming at her to knock that crap off.

The record's not without its high points, though. In fact it has two high points: Marc Gentry's elaborate "Mariposa," and Lee Ranaldo's simple but fully realized "Here." Other than that, the title of Tom Hazelmeyer's contribution, "Guitar Wank-Off #13," pretty much says it all.

-Zach Hooker