Three Arizonan burnouts (two of them siblings) followed their noisy hardcore debut with the most punk rock move of all: trolling their audience. Combining acid rock and country and punk into the bastard genre known as “cowpunk,” they delivered a fierce, funny, demented follow-up designed to please nobody and everyone at the same time. The Kirkwood’s slurred singing and off-beat excursions into the outer reaches of the desolate West gave songs like “Magic Toy Missing” and Future Nirvana-Covered “Lake of Fire” a punch-drunk swagger never quite emulated by anybody else.

– Jeff Treppel