Pitchfork

Ssion brain Cody Cody Critcheloe did indeed create the Yeah Yeah Yeahs' cover art, but his Kansas City band is way more trashed and glamorous. More likely to pluck used tampons from Karen O's trashcan and lip-sync into them, a tennis racket to emulate "Paradise by the Dashboard Light" and don animal costumes to dry-hump onstage, this theatrical glam-waste and drama-queen preening is what everyone didn't know they were anticipating this year.

The most fun for me is the groovy hate fuck via Luxx rave-up "Who's Your Favorite, Baby?", in which the corpse of electroclash gets wrapped in dirty baby diapers and stuffed in a Dairy Queen dumpster. Dousing itself with the champagne of beers, some East Texas 'shrooms (read: early Manchester Acid), Ssion is Ffun (it rhymes). They even toss out some post-Joe Tex "Chicken Crazy" audience participation, with inbred collegians from Brooklyn and Arkansas bellying up to the mic: "Hey, what's your major?" To which a whippet voice squeaks back: "My major is fuck you."

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