There's really not a lot going for this disc, yet it succeeds beyond its many flaws. The musical production value is about what you'd expect from an album with a cover printed on an inkjet -- it's bad. You can't expect much from four-piece rock band from the Los Angeles region headed by a guy nicknamed "Uncle", but there are promising hints of Frank Zappa throughout this chatty and pleasant release, and even if no single song is going to blow your toupee off, there are enough surprises throughout.

At first I thought I was going to ralf, because the album and its immediate sound just felt like the desperate clawing attempts of a bar-rock band to escape the dungeons of sleazy blues pubs, but I knew there was something more original here than your average draft beer of rawk 'n' roll when I heard "Who Let You In", where Uncle Dale opines, "Well who let you in, not by the hair on my chinny-chin-chin, I'll huff and I'll puff and wear this crack down, that's how nothing gets done in this town. This is how nothing catches on. Silly girl dancing to the thong-song." The lyrics are funny and intelligent, even if they're a bit silly. Sometimes they're too silly, and then I pretend I'm somewhere else. It's not a perfect release, but it has good intentions.

There are only six songs and less than a half hour of music, but despite certain production flaws and a bit of Uncle-indulgent lyrics, the music is refreshing for its unexpected twists. A single song might throw together clown-ish circus melodies with Barenaked Ladies-style whitey rap, Mothers of Invention jazz noodling, and Minutemen rock riffs. You can see the Rubatos having a hell of a lot of fun in the process, confident that their sound will shine through their economic difficulties. For the most part, the music is promising and playful.