It's quite refreshing to hear an album from a punky band that can't be classified neatly into the "Offspring" pop-punk category, and equally can't be classified in with the slightly pretentious art-punk of Ikara Colt and The Yeah Yeah Yeahs. Kudzu Wish instead create a sound that is undeniably punk, yet different to a lot of other stuff that's out there. They capture the sound of late 70s punk a lot more than they imitates the 90s style of punk. This is good, old-fashioned, hard rock music.

Part of what makes this record so good is the vocal delivery of Adam Thorn. Many punk vocalists resort to either tuneless screaming or whiny mumbling to get the words out, but Thorn makes do with an endearingly deadpan voice, which still manages to sound like singing rather than simply talking into the microphone. The technical proficiency of the rest of the band should not go unmentioned, you get the feeling that while the music is very simple in relative terms, these guys still know what they're doing.

The songs themselves are quite varied, within the limits that the band sets for themselves. The first song, Disguise! Disguise! starts off slowly, before building to a big middle section, then fizzling down at the end. Other highlights include the straightforward hard rock of We Have Big Hands, the blistering I Am Robot, and the somewhat-anthemic-but-not-really Do You Need An Anthem?

The main drawback to this album is that the first half is definitely superior to the second. While the first half grabs your attention with its style and ferocity, the second half spirals off into nowhere. This might be due to the length of the songs, on the first half of the album the songs average about three minutes long, but on the second half, a few songs make it into the four-plus minute territory. While longer songs do offer the potential to expand and develop ideas more thoroughly than a three-minute pop-song, in this case, their attention seems to wander and the focus in the music just drops off.

Still, with six great rock songs and four passable ones, this still isn't a bad release by any means. In the wrong hands, this could have been forty-five minutes of painful screaming and bad riffs, but Kudzu Wish have done quite well and not taken things too far. Based upon this album, I'd say that this band have a great deal of potential for the future.