The Stinks

It's easy to laugh at music critics who, after listening to a great work's premiere, dismiss said great work as garbage. The bomb throwers who panned Igor Stravinsky's Rite of Spring fall nicely into that rubric, though few in the audience at Spring's Paris premiere begged to differ.

Alas, The Kinks's Preservation: Act 1 does not fit so nicely. Listening to it is a bit like slowly committing suicide, as it kills its listener incrementally the way each and every shot of heroin saps a junkie's vital essence. Upon hearing Preservation the first time, my wife said she had visions of the cast of Jesus Christ Superstar battling with the boys and girls from Cats; then she threatened to divorce me if I ever played it again. It's a horrible thing when your wife smells musical bullshit faster than you do.

Disaster runs through the whole as fluidly as it does the parts. The lyrics wouldn't pass muster as a union local's anthem in Smyrna, Ga., the playing makes Half Japanese sound like late-60's era James Brown, and the sonics - writing and production - have the dulcet quality of two drunks arguing over the Yankees versus the Red Sox.

Pure torture. I hope it's on heavy rotation at Guantanomo Bay.

- Brian Moore