Heartless Bastards are a tough, garage-y combo -- but it's not like we haven't seen that sort of thing before. For Chrissake, how many tough, garagey combos could we possibly need? It would be easy to let Stairs and Elevators become a part of that roiling, anonymous, endless sea of new releases that constantly rolls past you: after all, you can't catch everything, can you? You could easily treat the disc as part of the greater tide of noisy guitar scream that signals the last gasp of rock and roll as a viable, popular medium. But don't. Dismissing Heartless Bastards as the latest batch of flies on rock's dying corpse means ignoring everything that's fantastic and alive about them. Sure, it's simple, three-piece rock, and sure, you've heard all of these licks, themes and tones before, but you haven't heard this band. You haven't heard these three musicians try to prove that rock and roll is still a going concern. And frankly, if the genre is going to have a modern-day advocate in the court of popular viability, it could do worse than the Heartless Bastards. They're true believers, and Stairs and Elevators is an eloquent advertisement for the cult of rock.

It's a buncha crunchy chords, a buncha tooth-rattling bass tones, a buncha ass-kicking drum hits, and a voice that demands attention. It's just what the doctor ordered, in that sense, and not a drop more or less. About that voice, incidentally: there's an almost Police-era-Sting-ness to lead singer Erika Wennerstrom's plaintive wails on "New Resolution"; on other tracks, like "Runnin", she's coasting on pure, edge-of-your-cracking-croak Jack White octane. It's weird to compare this woman's vocals to two male rock stars' tones, but after one listen, you'll agree: Wennerstrom could give any male rock star a run for his money. In fact, given that she seems to be in the middle of her range when she belts these out, there's a great deal more power behind her delivery than is the case for many of her straining, red-faced male counterparts.

There's more than a dollop of sex in these tracks, which gives the Bastards a bit more bump-and-grind than you'll find in similarly minded garage-rock purists like Burning Brides. Some of Stairs and Elevators' sex appeal can probably be chalked up to the strong female presence front-and-center, but mostly, the HBs just know how to keep a good, ass-shaking groove going.

If your diet is coming up a bit short of vitamin rock, the Heartless Bastards are precisely the dietary supplement you need. Use only with a doctor's supervision.