It’s clear from the nearly nine minutes of space-folk, banjo and all, of “Broken Glass Sky” that In Fades has its share of ambition, and that ambition and passion are welcome in the face of increasingly niche and too-tidy bands.

This album feels like a deliberate challenge to Gaslamp Killer, not only to claim his throne as the most intense, crazy sample-based hip-hop sound in California, but also to reinstate the MC’s role firmly in the new era. Death Grips’ MC Ride shouts with an in-the-red intensity somehow stranded in the Bermuda Triangle of soccer hooligan chants, “Who Let the Dogs Out,” and Onyx.

These guys are pure So-Cal, to the point that if you listen to their music with your eyes closed, you can see tripped-out palm trees and skateboards. If you’ve listened to their earlier albums, which were a great deal heavier in country sound, you’re in for a surprise at how much more rock and roll they’re getting.

Though he’s gone a long way from being the self-wallowing troubadour he once was, Vernon’s songs still sound similar to the earlier albums, and that isn’t a bad thing.

The Smile sessions were NOT written, arranged, and recorded by a drug-addled, paranoid recluse whose bad LSD trips had clouded his judgment. Done right, Smile could have tossed Pet Sounds around like a tidal wave, and maybe even made the Beatles yearn for yesterday. Though we’ll never know the answer to the mystery of what might have been, this collection gives us our best guess, while at the same time shattering any myths about what was assumed never could be.

I imagine songs like “Trainyard Boogie” and “I Reckon You Gonna Die” blasting eternally while I make my descent to whatever hell will have me.

Sweet and hard, like the candies that bear their name, Dum Dum Girls defy homological description. Cutesy goth? They own it.

Fullerton may have fallen off the map since those glory days, but it seems to be experiencing a full scale renaissance as of late, what with the opening of Burger Records and the trifecta of bands generating much hype: Audacity, Dirt Dress and the Cosmonauts. All these bands make lo-fi stoner garage punk of the highest caliber, overtly borrowing from others while still being undeniably unique (same could be said for Burger’s aesthetics). If Picasso’s quote, “good artists borrow, great artists steal,” is true, then the Fullerton scene is a gang of kleptomaniacal octopi.

This is the reissue equivalent of finding an untouched cheeseburger atop a trash can at the pier. (Don’t act like you’d be too proud.)

On this retrospective, the former Nerves/Plimsouls alum assembles a collection of demos and unreleased outtakes from his lengthy solo career. The folk protest-style songs generally take issue with the state of the American political and economic immorality…