The music. It's another three piece, but so complete, robust, satisfying. It's not minimal as much as essential. Erika on guitar, Mike Lampling on Bass and Kevin Vaughn, and it's bigger than it should be. This rhythm section is both fluid AND solid, I mean, like Entwistle-Moon solid; listen carefully to the drum fills rolling behind "My Maker" if you don't believe me, and "The Will" and "Pass and Fail" could be Isle of Wight-era Who.

The songs don't fit into any neat little category, they rock, there's retro (without being such a carbon copy you wonder why they even bother). I could totally expect to have walked into CBGB in 1985 and seen this band onstage, but they don't sound dated. In fact, quite the contrary: they sound fresh, original, inspired. You could even dance to them (okay, that drunk couple who think they can dance really well, but can't, will get up in front of this band and dance to something like "Pass and Fail" for sure).

If for some reason you didn't plunk down the cash to buy the Kimbrough tribute (and why not? It has two songs by the new Stooges!) "Done Got Old" is on here too, and sounds even better in context with the band's music book-ending it. It reveals itself to be the standout track that it absolutely is.

"Piano Song" is the only track to have, well, a piano, and this is thrilling. I wish there were more. It's just Wennerstrom and the keyboard and here you can actually hear every detail of that vodka-soaked, world-wise instrument. "Lazy" wraps it all up, crystallizes it, the voice, the crunge-worthy guitar, the stop-and-start precision of the rhythm section, in my minds' eye I see the drummer twirling his sticks above his head with a Moon-ish grin on his face. It also wouldn't have been out of place on Paranoid (and owes perhaps just a little to it).

Stairs and Elevators will be on my top ten of 2005, hands down. Hell, It already is.