Lung Leg's another technically- crippled, fashion- conscious band out to prove that, yes, anyone can play this three- chord crap called punk," and look cute doing it, too. Hell, after listening to Maid to Minx, the Muffs' Blonder and Blonder suddenly sounds like the Stooges' Funhouse. But as much as I love to exaggerate, I'm almost, like, totally serious here. And now, because I'm such a big lover of rock n' roll mascara, let's just examine the thick layers of this band's overall make-up.

Lung Leg happens to use just the right fashion accessories needed to be noticed in public: they've got the cute blond with swingin' '60s hair bob. There's the shock- blond wig, the leering eyes, the blue mascara, and the vintage Peyton Place outfit-- the band members look like they just stepped from the pages of Detour magazine. And although they can't play rock music for squat, you just know they all wield a mean blow dryer.

To these walking Gap ads, music, I reckon, is something that's kinda "neato" and a real kick to try playing. Maybe being in a band widens their hep social circle just a bit. Now they can brag to their socialite friends about how they're in a cool punk band. And, hey, I'll bet they've even met some real junkies, too-- dudes like the fun- loving glam addicts in "Trainspotting."

And all of this nonsense, surprisingly enough, from a record label that brought you one of the best albums of the '90s, Scrawl's Velvet Hammer. Hey, cool record companies make mistakes, too, eh? I mean, didn't Matador finance and release the rigor mortis indie- rot of Cat Power?

But I digress. I almost forgot, there's music here to contemplate and comment on. Maid to Minx begins with the spastic and silly "Previous Condition," as the lead singer mouths something about vacationing in a cold place. There's a nursery rhyme gone awry track where the girls keep shouting something like, "This is a hospital/ This is a job!" Note that extended listening to this song could potentially be worse than any other form of torture devised by the human mind. I can imagine a comparable nightmare experience would be something like taking a cross- country road trip with no tape deck and the radio playing only Nena's "99 Luftballons," over and over. But the overall worst of the worst could possibly be the kooky "Batman" theme- inspired "Kung Fu on the Internet." "What you need is kung fu kicks/ Not emotional content!" the kids shout at the top of their lung legs.

In a nutshell, these songs are only slight variations on the same awful song. Consider the B-52's if fronted by Yoko Ono and with Jad Fair on guitar, and you may get some idea of how inhumanly obnoxious this band is. And how these Scots can manage to sound so damn Japanese, I'll never know.

So, if you ever breeze by this album in the store and its front cover interests you-- a cartoon of two butch women wrestlers about to have it out-- don't be fooled. Lung Leg is not a gaggle of hairy- legged, muscle- bound lesbians screaming songs about cutting up males. Just look at the back cover-- there you'll find the band in all their photogenic Seventeen magazine glory. Personally, I'll take belligerent gorilla lesbians over these precious kewpie dolls any day. I can only recommend that you run far, far away from Maid to Minx.

-Michael Sandlin