[on the set of $100,000 Pyramid]

Cluer: "Improv Comedy!...." [Cluee shakes head]

Cluer: "uh...An inside joke!.." [Cluee shakes head again]

Cluer: "uh..uh..Loose Fur's 2006 Release Born Again In The U.S.A!"

Cluee: "OH,OH..Things that are much more fun and interesting for the participants than the audience?!"

[crowd claps, confetti drops, and we have a winner]

I had a hard time rating this album, because this seems more like a fist fulla incongruous tunes that just happen to exist on the same disc rather than a real cohesive work of audio art. It does seem as if everyone was given the topic to explore, something like: "Born again Christians and our current conservative culture". But the album feels like Tweedy and O'Rourke went their separate ways to work independently, only to reconvene for a day of recording ensuring that this lump of disparate tunes really won't work that well together as an album.

So how did I come up with a rating? I had to take it a part and treat this as just 10 separate songs. So, here we go:

1) "Hey Chicken": 3 stars: This is a no-nonsense, Wilco-esque rock song. Sounds a little dated, but a solid, right-down-the-middle effort.

2) "The Ruling Class": 4 stars: Hands-down the best song on the album. Witty, Whistles, Whimsy, the works.

3) "Answers To Your Questions": 2 stars: O'Rourke steps up the mic and puts me right to sleep. Unremarkable lyrics, melody and performance.

4) "Apostolic": 2 stars: This one really underscores them having fun at the expense of the listener. Is there even some Rush influence raising its head?

5) "Stupid As The Sun": 3 stars: Syncopated-to-death 90's Rock song that should get a '2' but something catchy enough about this one to bump it up a notch.

6) "Pretty Sparks": 1 star: I don't know how this one made the cut (not that the competition was that steep). "Don't be overrated, or be rated or identified.." I have to identify this song as crap and rate it accordingly.

7) "An Ecumenical Matter": 3 stars: Church unity, a good instrumental song for an idea instrumental to securing 'good' in the world.

8) "Thou Shalt Wilt": 1 star: Sounds like a Schoolhouse Rock rip-off. Some bizarre children's song. Rhymes mandate with conjugate wrapped in a terrible melody. This one really confused me.

9) "Wreckroom": 3 stars: Really a pretty great song..would have made it to 4 if they could have left out that semi-punk feedback parts (again just candy for the participants, poison for the listener) that jerk you clean out of the mellow mood the rest of the song puts you in. I'm not up for the emotional rollercoaster.

10) "Wanted": 3 stars: This one feels like a scene in some musical. Catchy and upbeat, but wrapped in sad, love-lost lyrics. A good song.

Average them up and get a whopping "2.5". This is not an option, so being a nice-guy, I rounded-up. Maybe I am asking way too much from a simple side project. Maybe the point of such collaboration projects is just to have fun, and bounce musical ideas off of one another, and throw whatever comes out onto a disc, and move-on. If so, then I guess you could call this effort a mild success. But with a stellar line-up like Jeff Tweedy, Jim O'Rourke, and Glenn Kotche, I think it is fair to expect a bit more.