Flesh Lights
Muscle Pop (Twistworthy) Named for a torch-shaped rubber vagina, Austin’s Flesh Lights pungently encapsulate the sorry state of sexless males with this 12-song scuzz-punk meditation. While the Motards/Chumps are clear hometown antecedents, the trio’s loco-motive mash of distorted guitar yaps played out against dramatically garbled shout-along vox and caffeinated surf beats has a hot-pink bubblegum core. That makes a ham-fisted, cunnilingus-alluding love note such as “I Am Romance” soak through like a ripped-jeans riff on the Ohio Express. Muscle Pop‘s elongated climax, “The Biggest Mistake,” introduces collapsing piano runs that embody the compromising roil of hatred and horniness that morphs breakups into life-squandering sagas. 
This article appears in November 18 • 2011.
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Greg Beets was born in Lubbock on the day Richard Nixon was elected president. He has covered music for the Chronicle since 1992, writing about everyone from Roky Erickson to Yanni. Beets has also written for Billboard,Uncut, Blurt, Elmore, and Pop Culture Press. Before his digestive tract cried uncle, he co-published Hey! Hey! Buffet!, an award-winning fanzine about all-you-can-eat buffets.
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