Truckee Brothers: Double Happiness

With amps turned to thunder-and-­lightning levels and enough instruments on hand to open their own music store, San Diego's Truckee Brothers take a blowtorch to everything from stolen elections to pretentious rock stars to the nature of Mother Nature on Double Happiness. Frank Zappa and Captain Beefheart live on in the quartet's twisted, zany lyrical swatches such as "Kiss My Komodo," which raises a huge middle finger to "groupies and sycophants." The Truckees sound like they took a master's degree in riffology from the Allman Brothers and a Ph.D. in three-chord, in-your-face '70s rock from Cheap Trick. The beats are hypnotically headbanging, and the guitars sound like they've been beamed straight from some death star where Marc Bolan is still giving lessons. "Planning for the 21st Century," "Bon Voyeurage" and "Purple Waves of Gain" could teach the Supersuckers a thing or two. And just when the Brothers approach the edge of sanity, they drop a hooky rocker like "I Am Nature" or the title track, allowing listeners to take a deep breath and realize it's going to be okay.