I love the cheap-sounding keyboards (Casio? I can live in hope). I love the also cheap-sounding and frequently fuzzed-out guitar and bass (Slates amps and Skinny Rat guitars? Sounds like they could be), the determinedly plonky single-note guitar lines they play, and the sudden sheets of blissful noise they make. I love Golf’s “what is pitch and why should I be bothered with it?” and “Do I think I’m Stephen Malkmus, or do I think I’m Andy Falkous?” vocals. I love that the song title “FKUSA” stands for “French-Kissing in the USA” and not the ruder thing it also might stand for. I love how that song devolves into its own remix, and then further devolves into what Jason Korzen* might call an “ambient industrial dronescape.” I love “Mlle Amy Dutronc”’s occasional backing vocals and her lead turn on “Three Cigarettes in an Ashtray”. I love the “we can’t afford all those fancy microphones” drum tone. I love the unexpected, gloriously ragged horns that rip open “It’s Coming Straight for Us” just when you think you’ve pegged it as a foul-mouthed and perhaps uninspired rip-off of Aiden Moffat’s songwriting style.

I love how, while some of Smokers Die Younger’s influences are obvious enough, this band doesn’t sound especially beholden to any one of them in particular.

I love the sheer stones this band consistently displays: the potentially-offputting name, starting their album with the harshest, least-welcoming track (”Bad Driving School”), tackling a Patsy Cline showpiece song with nothing like the requisite equipment, avowing that their eclecticism warrants coining their own genre (”hard trasp”).

I love that I can listen to X Wants the Meat straight through and want to hear the whole thing again immediately.

Perhaps most of all, I love how Smokers Die Younger takes attributes that would usually be weaknesses and mutates them into strengths.

If you would like to see if you love them too, you can listen free to maybe my favorite song, “I Spy Dry Fear” at last.fm. Thee Sheffield Phonographic Corporation can hook you up with a physical copy if you’re in the UK or don’t mind international postage&packing; I got my 320K MP3 hookup from Pure Groove Digital, which I endorse despite a clunky download user interface; and iTunes Music store is another digital option.

* SDY sound nothing like the sprites, truly, but Korzen’s coinage is too apt to not swipe, and too good to not attribute.