Theo Hilton
's
rock
sextet from Athens, GA,
Nana Grizol
is a fresh and frisky, if somewhat ramshackle, outfit that hasn't really gotten out of the garage yet on its debut album,
Love It Love It
. The childlike artwork on the album cover, credited to one "Sam Phillips," hints at the D.I.Y. feel of a band that sounds like its members learned to play their instruments about six months ago; they are still in the first flush of excitement at being musicians and being in a band, but matters of cohesion, much less arrangement, escape them completely. They just bash away excitedly, coming up with rudimentary chord structures to support
Hilton
's lyric-filled songs. The singer's words tumble out of his mouth in an adenoidal rush occasionally reminiscent of
Jonathan Richman
or
Black 47
Larry Kirwan
, full of odd observations and ingenuously expressed feelings. The result is a debut that's engaging and amusing in the manner of a small child, the kind who might have drawn the cartoons on the cover. ~ William Ruhlmann