Wax Fang

Louisville, Kentucky's Wax Fang takes an alchemical approach to indie shout rock, melting extended mathy guitar riffage into strangely catchy psychedelic mini-symphonies that sometimes suggest the Flaming Lips on a sub-prime crisis budget or a more alert and tense My Morning Jacket. (That band's frontman, Jim James, counts himself a fan and recently took the band on tour.) On this year's self-released, accurately titled La La Land, founder Scott Carney gives up on his one-man-band delusions for a heavier power trio trip. Land fuses the delightful rubbish of his lyrics ("Don't see a doctor unless something's bothering you!" goes one of his more coherent declarations) with lots of Moog zingers, time signature warps and operatic rock gestures aimed less at the experimentalist fringe and more at the stoner-rock base.