The Love Me Nots

Remember when it felt as if any band with loud guitars whose singer didn't make you think of Creed was being lumped in with the Vines as part of some ambiguous post-Strokes garage revival? This is what that music would've sounded like if it was real garage. The Love Me Nots have clearly spent some time absorbing Nuggets, reviving the magic of '60s garage rock with a fuzz-guitar sound fat enough to let you know they've heard the Cynics, and an organist whose more inspired moments hit like Steve Nieve as the great lost Mysterian. You could credit producer Jim Diamond. After all, they did go all the way to Detroit just so he could tell them what they should have known already — namely, "Yeah, that take is fucking awesome." But it wouldn't matter how much Diamond did or didn't have to do with that money-shot moment in "Move in Tight" (where the trash-rock guitar lead explodes out of nowhere on what used to be an organ-driven track), if the song itself weren't a new garage classic in its own right, one of 12 infectious variations on the form.