*** The Anchormen

PUNK ROCK IS AWESOME

(Unstoppable Records)

*** Jef Czekaj

SONGS ABOUT YOU AND YOUR BOYFRIEND

(Unstoppable Records)

DATELINE SOMERVILLE: bespectacled menaces terrorize library patrons with snotty, oblique literary references disguised as dumb three-chord gunk-punk. "Like Fat Day on Slim-Fast," local critic croons. "Bratty and silly, but with surprising little details that mark 'em as outsiders, and not entirely unserious. They may in fact be pragmatic and ultimately useful members of society." The Anchormen's lyrics are the kind of thing you'd write to help you study for an English final -- see "Lysander Spooner" and "Houdini's Ghost," the latter summarizing the escape artist's biography, and "Airborne Event," which was stolen straight from the pages of Don DeLillo's White Noise. On cross-examination, the local critic admits he hasn't made these associations on his own but is instead borrowing liberally from the disc's helpfully footnoted lyric sheet. "Which is also," he acknowledges, "how I know that `Meter Made' isn't just a bad pun but a summary of what appears to have been a week-long parking saga that gripped the pages of the Boston Globe earlier this year."

Meanwhile, Anchormen drummer Jef Czekaj, the obscure artist behind the underground comic R2-D2 Is an Indie Rocker (later changed to Hypertruck to avoid potential lawsuits), unleashes a very strange mostly acoustic solo album. "It looks and sounds like the kind of handmade pop album you'd make if you'd had to repeat fourth grade for an entire decade," the local critic raves. There's this great song called "Freshest Beats" where Jef sings, "I've got the freshest beats," but you kinda have to take his word for it because there's no drums on the song at all. In fact, for a solo album by a drummer, there are hardly any drumming, and it would appear that what little there is has been sampled from Madonna and Dirty Three albums.

There is a very good song about retail chains and Satan. It starts with Jef singing "Buy me something from Pottery Barn" and ends with "Old Navy is responsible for all the evil in the world." He's nothing if not a partisan shopper. And then there's this techno breakbeat at the end, as if he'd wandered into an Oak Tree outlet or something. He also does a Mary Timony song -- "Honeycomb," from The Dirt of Luck -- and he has a song that's just him playing video games for two and a half minutes. And though "Undead Flowers" doesn't sound at all like the Stones' "Dead Flowers," it could be Hate Your Friends-era Lemonheads as recorded by the Elephant 6 pixies, with a solo that's just someone playing "London Bridge" on a Casio.

-- Carly Carioli

(Jef Czekaj plays T.T. the Bear's Place this Monday, November 13. Call 492-BEAR.)