Crying Nut Vol. 5 - The Cow of OK Pasture

The album is everything you can expect from Crying Nut: loud, infectious rock tunes, rowdy lyrics, and manic energy. Their riotous grassroots folk punk - complete with accordion! - has grown a lot more polished and inventive with this album. The instruments and vocals all have their own places, and there are more snazzy arrangements and less of the chaotic noise of previous albums. If the boys have matured in implementation, they are thankfully still as immature and joyfully raucous as ever in presentation.

It is pretty hard to go wrong with this album. There are fun straightforward pop punk numbers, like "Bump" (Track 3) and "Bedwetter Generation" (Track 13). And if you've ever felt the overwhelming desire to chant "Luxembourg" - and really, who hasn't? - then there is always Luxembourg (Track 2). For slightly less riotous, Crying Nut-style folk, there is the relaxed accordion- and acoustic-guitar-driven "Bird" (Track 10), perhaps most suitable for lazy strumming on a beach, and "Myong-dong Calling" (Track 4), which is a far shot from London Calling, but still a decent mid-tempo reggae rock track with catchy guitar hooks. Where Crying Nut fabulously outdoes itself is when folk, rockabilly, polka, punk, and lunacy collide, as in My World (Track 11) and "Drink" (Track 5). Just for the record, I believe if a drunken circus cow drove his pick-up truck into an Irish pub and started an ad-hoc polka band, the result would sound something like "Drink".

It is easy to discount artists after they have stayed past their prime and, in Crying Nut's case, become suspiciously mainstream-friendly in the process. True, we will never again see the raw, anarchic Crying Nut of 1998, young, brilliant punk pioneers on the verge of breakthrough. But the 2006 Crying Nut has developed their signature musical style to a new level of circus magic. And there is always the accordion.