Sometimes when the moon is in its third Quarter, or when a cat is seen near a treestump, or when Uranus and Ganymede are lined up just right, I like a disc on the first listen. This is such a disc. Now here I sit, looking for the proper words to describe it to you, my friend, because you might-- just might-- want to give it a try.

Don Caballero is not unlike an excellent band called Iceburn, but where Iceburn takes avant guitar to new extremes of abstract, Don Caballero lingers with repetitive, syncopated melodies that fall upon one another, somehow creating cohesive songs from the cacaphony of frenetically beaten drums and dense yet delicate guitar work. Damon Che, Don Caballero's drummer, drives the machine with alternately explosive and haunting beat tapestries, framing the guitars of Mike Banfield and Ian Williams. I'm pleased to tell you that it's actually delicious, though not so much in a Tootsie Roll sort of way so much as a Crab Imperial sort of way. Y'git me?

That's to say that these three gentlemen from Steeltown USA, (aka Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania) have crafted a genuinely riveting, hypnotic piece of avant- rock that spares the maniacal noodlings and permits weird harmonies to emerge that make listening well worth the while. But pop addicts need not apply, as its intelligent denseness requires a modicum of attention.

-James P. Wisdom