Not a whole lot of albums I love more than this one, especially when the sun is bright and trees are leafy, but for more reasons than just how well it meshes with warm weather in ways that, say, Kid A meshes with winter, or Loveless with dark rainy days.

Phenomenal album from start to finish, but not in the "every single track is awesome" way: there are peaks and valleys throughout the album--throughout songs, even--but they all come together to make the entire listening experience incredible for me. For example, the way it has a sort of overture to establish the recording's heavy violin presence before introducing guitars and vocals on the second track, or how you can just somehow feel that the second verse of "All Her Favorite Fruit" is what you'd been building up to the whole time, or how the Big Closer is actually the penultimate track which leaves the final track itself to be a fine little winding-down session.

Before multiple genre tags on the All Music Guide made modern indie bands get into pissing contests over who could be the most things to the most people in the weirdest ways, these guys were straddling disparate genres with the best of them. Sure, you could just lump them in as all-purpose late '80s college rock, but to do that would be to lump them in with the likes of R.E.M., which seems a bit of a disservice insofar as R.E.M. made their name by milking the same janglymumbly teat bone-dry for like 30 years (and probably 15 too many). Here, Camper Van Beethoven synthesized that vein of jangle American alternative, country, klezmer, ska, Bakersfield sound, and probably more, to say nothing of lyrics about Ronald Reagan or Gravity's Rainbow (the whole thing is kind of a vague concept album, a series of sketches of various broken and neglected people). It sounds wacky and contrived, I agree, and yet it works so well to have that violin come wafting and wailing over outlaw country riffs, or to add a touch of pedal steel guitar to an ordinary folk-rock workout, or to come down after a big emotional run with a Mitteleuropan accordion dirge. But I submit that I wouldn't be as impressed with the ancillary instrumentation if their fundamentals, viz. the guitars, weren't so rock-solid. So many perfect guitar tones all around, whether they're rocking or ringing or strumming or what have you. Everything is so perfectly shaped and placed.

Everyone should have or obtain this album. I can facilitate that if you want.

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Didn't Camper Van Beethoven turn into Cracker? Or is that some other band ....?

Well I lost an eye in mexico
Lost two teeth where I don't know
People see me comin' and they move to the other side of the road