If you had previously listened to Jaguar Love’s EP, then you should know what to expect with their companion full-length release , Take Me to the Sea. It’s just a lot more of the high-energy squalor that was previewed on ‘Highways of Gold’ and ‘My Organ Sounds Like…’. Funny enough, those songs act as the bookends on Take Me to the Sea, if you could even consider the album some kind of book, disjointed as it is. It’s definitely not the type of album you sit around a darkened living room, lightly bobbing your head to, taking it all in. The music desires you to be active and thrashing about, which is no doubt the point that Jaguar Love was aiming for. The circus of squealing yelps, guitar crunch, standard bass reinforcement and cartwheel drums scream at you to get up and make a fool of yourself.

Take Me to the Sea does contain a few moments of intrigue, in which they delve into richer waters. Lead singer Johnny Whitney’s vocals on ‘Georgia’ are an alternation of warm gospel and the normal scream-squeals that litter each song, like a bad case of the Monday’s - always to come again, and never to let up. ‘Bonetrees and Broken Hearts’ has the same dynamic, a smooth, flowing verse, followed by a dust cloud of guitar crescendos and the strained falsetto fatality of Whitney.

‘Vagabond Ballroom’ sounds like it could have been the b-side for At the Drive-In or The Mars Volta, with it’s frenetic drum tumbles and pitch-bent guitar moans. The only thing that is uncharacteristic in this song is the organ, which pushes everything into a cheap Las Vegas lounge. Jaguar Love in a cheap Las Vegas lounge…well, the old ladies working the slot machines with a junkie’s fervor would get an earful, and probably try to escape Whitney’s vocal clutches, despite their addiction.

After all, it is my firm belief that Johnny Whitney’s voice actually does kill old people. And cute animals. Which is ironic, because he sounds like a cat making love to a squirrel. However, it’s no doubt that fans of The Mars Volta will like Jaguar Love to some degree or another. In actuality, they are a little more focused then the Mars Volta, because they don’t employ saxophone solos that last for ten minutes and hold on to melodies, rather then abandoning them at every whim, in some foppish attempt to sound like Frank Zappa. And thank god for that.

Michael Tenzer