There's risk involved in being an older brother. Sure, you get lots of attention when forging a path through middle school graduation; when you're sixteen, you get to drive the parents' mini-van; and when you crush the passenger-side headlight, it gets dismissed by your parents as a "mistake." Your little brother lives in the shadow of the oldest child; he admires you, copies your every CD purchase and measures his wardrobe by the standards you set. But one day, you come home from college, ready to suit up for that first day at Andersen Consulting and the little bro's loading up a beat-up Ford van with floor toms and mic stands-- his band's got a show at the best club in town.

New Wet Kojak have spent the last half of the 1990s hooking up that same gig. As the Beaver to Girls Against Boys' Wally, they've told that "What's the dirtiest joke in the world?" joke to any indie rocker who'd listen, and told it pretty well, too. Take Scott McCloud's pick-up line libido-croon from the dopest-ass GVSB song you know and fuse it with the simple, undulating bass/drum/sax combo of Morphine at their grimiest and you've got the general idea. What gives New Wet Kojak's sex-rock credibility, however, is that current and longtime GVSBers McCloud and bassist Johnny Temple have both their tongues deep in the cheek of everyone this "little brother band" has seduced into ear-shot. The proof's in the lyrics to Do Things' standout, "Punxnotdead:" "And Marilyn Manson's not a pussy/ He's a rock god/ With a hot bod." Sounds like a "Mr. Show" out-take to me.

The first-born lustre of Girls Against Boys steadily lost its sheen during those same late '90s. Major-label polish (all but blindingly applied to DGC's Freak*on*ica by producer Nick Launay) did little more than slap trendy beats and techno-fizzle onto an older sibling already well-entrenched in a deep genre-rut. Eli Janney's harrowing stage-ballistics at a recent show made Temple's blah-blah explanation of GVSB's future all the more depressing. But that same bored bassist helped make New Wet Kojak's South By Southwest performance engaging and appropriately "wet."

And by those standards, Do Things, these guys' third-- and arguably best-- full-length is utterly soaked. The production is upped to the boiling point, adding wacky synths expertly, and giving the sound of their 1995 self-titled debut the consistency of a bowl of Campbell's Chicken N' Stars with one can too much water. But for McCloud's half-bullhorned vocal and a red-light district sax denouement, "Love Career" might have fit nicely onto the Dismemberment Plan's last great scheme, Emergency and I; Vangelis-style keys gloss this waking urban nightmare while Temple's bass paves the damp, darkened alleys. Regrettably, it's just what I'd hoped Freak*on*ica would be.

Admirers of Bedhead might find a shockingly flattering eulogy in the slow-core sleeper highlight "Def Con Soul," where guitar chimes spike the dulled bass like Absolut in the punch bowl. "Auto-E" (whose "E" stands for "erotic"), spares no time wanking, instead managing to get to several stylistic points in a satisfying 2:40; an Archer Prewitt-ish line introduces a two-note sax, lubricating McCloud's "You psycho-savant in the cream nation/ You give me the news, you wanna erase me" to perfection. An eerie bridge comprised of oarsman-driving toms and a shattered sax might even have looked good on Godspeed You Black Emperor's esoteric cutting room floor.

But don't let my name-checking fool you. New Wet Kojak ushers all their cousins' ripe, influential fruits into a juice all their own. To extend the sibling metaphor, they're wearing similar t-shirts to big brother Girls Against Boys, but the bands they advertise seem a little cooler when Kojak puts 'em on. Like your pesky little brother carving out a niche in the family way radder than yours, Do Things does things-- good things.

A friend once told me he thought New Wet Kojak sounded like GVSB after listening to Guided by Voices' "Hot Freaks" about 50 times on heroin. Well, Do Things certainly has "a wet spot bigger than a great lake." This one is on the house and this one is better than ever.

-Judson Picco