Methodically Assessed Melodies. Wet Illustrated, 1x1x1.

Given the unprecedented success garnered by the likes of Girls, DOM, Ariel Pink, Smith Westerns, the late Jay Reatard etc. of late, less can certainly be more, and this is a mentality that's indubitably been adopted by San Fran trio Wet Illustrated. Signed to True Panther Sounds, their superficially ramshackle aesthetic has certainly found itself sheltered under the right roof yet where at first exposure their wiry, clanging guitars and scratched melodies may seem obvious and perhaps obnoxious, heartfelt intricacies gush through the tracklisting of 1x1x1. Ideally pronounced one by one by one, it seems to make a degree of sense to methodically assess what is, in fact, a complex record capable of comfortably skittering through myriad styles.

1. Pete Jogs Poodle: Wild and woolly, phased out guitars are beamed in atop unintelligible, mechanical mumbling.

2. My Head: Doubtless You'll have been subjected to a band with the boisterous ebullience of an unmanned hosepipe in a grotty basement somewhere that you were left only to wish sounded anywhere near as invigorating as My Head.

3. Claws: Wilco heard through waterclogged ears down in Bikini Bottom, yelping and yowling once more pierces incomprehensible lyrical body.

4. Gypsy Town: The most memorable rickety guitar jangle on the record, Gypsy Town situates Wet Illustrated at their most coherent and while their slurred shrieking is charming, they're at their most captivating when they're understandable.

5. Herman's Head: Having fled My Head, Wet Illustrated here relocate to Herman's, tranquil keys wriggling free of duelling guitar scuffle to create a quite symphonic denouement to another highlight.

6. Born Stoked: The hallucinatory refrain of "You walk through that door / Your feet never touch the floor" is repeated ad infinitum atop ascending, equally cyclical guitars tinged with the doleful twang of Real Estate records.

7. Saints: Had Richard Hawley been brought up wading and wallowing in Pacific surf in place of drowning in melancholy, lingering around Coles Corner, his Gretsch may chime this chirpily in place of gently, incessantly, weeping. Whether Hawley's vocals could ever be quite so acerbic is another matter altogether.

8. Marketplace: As if the distilled elixir of punk were dribbling from drumming lead vocalist Robbie Simon's lips, Marketplace sounds like Mick Jones squawking nonchalantly over a cross-pollination of early Kinks and Nine Black Alps.

9. Satellite Kids: This is presumably what Raoul Duke's brains felt like after 119 minutes of Terry Gilliam's radical envisaging of Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas. Satellite Kids is crazed and dangerously, seductively so. "Said I like it, looking shitty in the city", lyrically, takes some beating too.

10. Flying: The track from 1x1x1 most analogous with fellow San Fran stoners, Girls. Fitting then, that it should be entitled thus.

11. Boogie Away: The sort of psychgaze that pieces itself together behind your eyes if you stare into the vortex of a tie dye t-shirt for prolonged periods, Boogie Away is an unrelentingly entrancing number.

12. (Where I Wanna Be) Buried: Wet Illustrated at their most menacing, macabre, and morbid, (Where I Wanna Be) Buried is a haunting tune in both style and subject matter, its agitated stabs and swells of guitar unsettling in the extreme.

13. Luxury Waives: Ending the record on a twinkling, treble-smudged high, this abstract instrumental revels in reverie and provides comfort in comedown from the ecstasy of a superbly crafted debut long-player.