"Yesterday Rules," the brand new album by Mr. T Experience, is the CD to beat for Rock Record of the Year. MTX has long been evolving from the godfathers of Berkeley Punk Pop — Green Day famously got the platinum record sales while MTX kept working just under the radar — and with this new disc it's time for the wider world to hear what it's been missing.

It's the rare CD that makes my brain do fancy dog tricks trying to keep track of just what the hell is happening and how to mentally file it. One minute I've got the answer: Cheap Trick and the Buzzcocks and The Stooges. Next it's the Byrds and early Elvis Costello. Then it's Weezer and the Kinks and the Beach Boys and Warren Zevon and the Hollies. Then I lose track all over again because it isn't any of those things, really. MTX ringleader Dr. Frank has one of the most distinctive voices — singing-wise, arrangement-wise and especially lyrically — of any living rock entertainer. If that wasn't enough, Jeebus apparently gave the Doctor an infuriating ability to write perfect, hook-filled pop songs.

At least until their next record, "Yesterday Rules" is MTX's true "essential recording," to borrow the language of Amazon.com: 13 slices of beautiful pop / rock / punk music, a successful melding of a thousand iconic pop-rock-punk singles (along with many unexpected touches and styles) with a sound that couldn't possibly have existed before late 2003.

That's when Dr. Frank and guitarist Ted Angel, bassist Bobby J and drummer Jym went back to the studio with Kevin Army — who produced most of the past MTX albums, along with stuff by Green Day, Rancid, etc. — to make a record based in part on Frank's "Eight Little Songs," a homemade Web-only solo recording. He documented the entire process on his blog , let us hear the demos, whined like Woody Allen about his alleged inability to get it right ... and the resulting record is as mysterious as ever. ("Yesterday Rules" contains all sorts of computer extras, including all the blog posts about the making of the record. And pictures, lyrics and chords, which I took advantage of by learning "Big Strange Beautiful Hammer" to play with my own band.)