Sounding like the Strohs-fueled fever dream of a weekend bar-band gone hopelessly, horribly wrong, King Uszniewicz & His Uszniewicztones may have been the most enthusiastically awful band to ever be captured by modern recording equipment. Sure, the Shaggs may have sounded more inept, but while listening to their anti-classic Philosophy of the World, you get the feeling that it was the work of three girls who were trying to play rock & roll without having a clear idea of what the stuff sounded like. King Uszniewicz and his co-conspirators, however, were clearly well acquainted with the basic canon of rock as they stumbled blindly through "Little Latin Lupe Lu" and "Papa Oom-Mow-Mow," but their lack of any rudimentary skills as musicians, combined with their booze-addled tendency to beat every note (and instrument) in their path within an inch of its life, resulted in a blurry wallop of sound guaranteed to leave a mark on anyone who encounters it. Within their stellar atonality, however, lurks a liberating energy and free-spirited joy -- never will you hear a group of musicians sounding so happy to be the worst band on Earth as you will on King Uszniewicz & His Uszniewicztones' debut long-player Teenage Dance Party. Between King Uszniewicz's remarkable sax solos (boasting a range of three notes, at least one of them flat), Logjam Lurch Patterson's guitar features that explore the more painful possibilities of the whammy bar, and vocals that would shame a karaoke night at the drunk tank, Teenage Dance Party will either have you wincing in pain or doubled over in laughter -- and how many other albums can you name that are guaranteed to bring out that strong a reaction in their listeners? Some sort of masterpiece, this is. ~ Mark Deming

Rovi