Do you ever open up a new record, put it in your player, and get blown away by how good it is? You jump up and down, dancing and screaming until you piss yourself with the thrill that you have just found the next great thing? Do you ever find yourself doing this? I don’t. I hate everything I listen to the first time I hear it. I immediately find fault, compare it to something I have already loved for four years, and then I take a nap. Naps are very good for you. It takes days, months, sometimes even years for me to truly love and understand an entire album. Only a few times has this not been the case, and I have felt my jaw drop to the floor. The first time was when I got Men at Work’s Business as Usual. I was 11. I could relate so closely with that song “Down Under.” Sure, I couldn’t locate Australia on a map—to be honest, I still can’t. The next two times love-at-first-listen struck were when I stumbled across the Pixies’ Come On Pilgrim and Nirvana’s Nevermind. I felt that God himself had hand-delivered them to me. Turns out it wasn’t God, but my big brother. And the best part was, neither of these releases had anything to do with geography. The Pixies were from Boston, and Nirvana happened to be from Seattle, but they all could have been Canadians for all I cared. Now, out of Dallas comes a new band that has me nervous with excitement. It’s Lewis, and the album is called Progress and Regress (AltarScience). On my first listen, I fell for these bastards and their dirty, irritated, emotional space rock. I sang along until I was hoarse even though I couldn’t figure out what they were singing. This one made it through my cynical radar, and I’m glad it did.

You can hear John piss himself weekday mornings on 90.3 FM KCMU from 6-10am and also live on the Web at www.kcmu.org