Shannon Selberg’s entirely reconfigured, revamped Heroine Sheiks have lab tested 11 factory fresh, fully assembled, tuned and torqued songs – not ideas for songs, not experimental keyboard games – but nothing shy of his finest body of work since the Cows seminal Sexy Pee Story, if not better. The new line-up subverts its four on the floor rock sensibilities, using active riff age and rhythm, but fucking it up just the right amount. Shannon’s vaudevillian creep show has never been this well utilized, showing the amount of restraint and excess at the right times in exploring his menagerie of hard luck characters. Age and musical maturity have chiseled away the unnecessary parts of the persona, gone is the drawn-on mustache of shock and in its place the true five o’clock shadow of the narrative mindfuck.