by Tim SendraIf you’re going to make a record as teenage, rambunctious, and wild as the Smith Westerns' debut album, being actual teenagers can only help. The Chicago quartet were all in their teens when their self-titled record came out on HoZac (though, when it was reissued the next year by Fat Possum, one or more of them may have been in their twenties and seriously over-the-hill), and the record is exactly what you’d want from a bunch of Nuggets-era punk rock and T. Rex loving youngsters. Raw, energetic, and full of snotty tunes that have huge singalong hooks, the record is a 30-minute blast of good-time rock & roll that sounds like it was recorded in a parent’s basement (or, more specifically, the inside of a washing machine in said basement). While the sound is pleasingly murky and overloaded, bumping up the fidelity wouldn’t have hurt the songs a bit. Unlike quite a few of their contemporaries who use noise to hide the fact that they aren’t writing very good songs, » Read more