As a reviewer and avid music aficionado, you know this experience all too well: you get to the middle point an album, and although you really want to give this new record a fair trial, you realize with creeping gloom that you're going to have to sit through another 4 or 5 (or sometimes in the golden age of available CD disc space ten) more songs. Soundtrak gives the listener the opposite effect - as you get to cut 6, the band is really hitting their stride, and then it's over. Somewhere between the length of an EP and a short album, Soundtrak blasts through your sound system and makes you want the second half of the record. Too bad there isn't one, yet.

Though listed as a punk/pop band, Soundtrak is far more sophisticated. Dynamic musicianship and fascinating lyrics meld into six powerful songs that make for essential listening, showing a remarkable range of emotions and musicality. They introduce themselves by blasting into "In Time", a melodic meditation on relationship saving. The music is energetic and driving, and presents an urgency that has become rare in pop these days. Paul Jenkins' 80's-style guitar riffing supports Jorge Gonzales' longing vocals ("In time we'll find a way around this"), although it's clear that he doesn't really know how they will work this out.

"Available Memory" is introduced by a mechanical sounding guitar strain reminiscent to The Rolling Stones "Gimme Shelter" before Ben Brock's howling drums kick in. This is a fascinating song about conflicting emotions, guilt and denial. "Hardest Day" is an ethereal fog of desolation and redemption "All my friends are gone/like lions let out of their cage - I called your name/you found me/arms of grace/surround me now". Jorge Gonzalez and Paul Jenkins' interlocking guitars blast into the early Pretenders-styled "Latest Craze", a cautionary tale of the quest for fame and the evolution of fake friendship ("Loveless wives and hungry flies call themselves your friends"). Probably the hardest hitting song on the album is "Let Go" - a gutsy plea for mercy from one lover to another. "Let Go" offers direct lyrics that inform raw emotions such as "We cut into each other with words just to see who will bleed first" and "I never wanted to die with you but the way you're digging graves changed my mind." Gonzalez channels Paul Westerberg's desperation and offers an olive branch as opposed to a hand grenade. The album ends abruptly with "Curtains" which I assume is the aftermath of said relationship ("Honesty was a curtain covering your face/I pulled the cord and raised your cover/Let love fade - I will not dance because I'm different than you).

I haven't heard of this band before, and they offer precious little about themselves on the CD, but I believe we'll hear a lot more from these guys. Gonzales' vocal style is reminiscent of Coldplay, latter day Replacements, Filter and U2, and is uniformly passionate and urgent throughout the record. The musicianship conveys an 80's quality, akin to Echo and the Bunnyman and the Cult, while all the while finding their own voice. More, please.

Don't let the easy-going laid back sound of Carrie Weiland's album fool you; there's a volcano of emotion torment going on inside. After getting midway through "No Really, I'm Fine", you start to get the picture.

Listening to the opening track "It's the Love Of", Carrie presents herself as a bluesy, confident singer-songwriter with a roadhouse barback band to compliment her. She seems assured in telling the listener what love is and should be and "what is the glue that will make us stick". Her experience is backed up again in "Disagree" in which she recounts "I've been down that road before", even if the song is officially a third party account of a relationship. In "Divine Light", once again, Carrie comes across using her best Ann Wilson voice crossed with Macy Gray phrasing as an emotional advisor and that spiritual guidance is coming down from above to guide the listener out of the funk they may be in.

But keep listening, and another voice soon shows; one of uncertainty and vulnerability, and you realize that maybe Carrie is not so sure. "You Love Me" reinforces the theme of her experience, but puts a twist on it; "I've been around enough to know that maybe I don't know how to love at all". She reminds us of that comforting naivete that comes from never having their heart broken and a lack of vision to see it coming. This vulnerability is reinforced in "Right For You" which almost certainly recounts a prior relationship where the person she was with "never loved me half as deep as (she) needed to feel". It makes you think that maybe she's guilty of the same problem in the previous song; after all, those who remember the past are often doomed to repeat it. All this experience has its drawbacks.

It is at this point where you begin to understand what this album is; "No Really, I'm Fine". Something is wrong underneath the surface, and certainly the surface of the album is pleasing to the ear. The musicianship is very supportive of the artist; make no mistake, this album is about the singer and the words. Fortunately, Carrie can deliver; her Heart/Joan Osbourne by way of Basia voice is sterling and she does some interesting vocal phrasing. But underneath the fine musicianship and reassuring vocals seems to boast an uncertain heart who is making the most of where she is right now.

The Dishes self titled full length album clocks in at a brisk 32 minutes. What's even more interesting about the disc's length is that nearly ten minutes of the album is taken up on the first song, "Got Something to Tell You". While most of what they have to tell you contains shrieking feedback and pulsating bass riffing, the message is clear - this is an upbeat woman-fronted punk band who let it fly. And by punk, I'm not talking about the nonsense pop confection that Avril Levigne doles out. In fact, someone should sit her down and force her to listen to this.

Fronted by Sarah Staskauskas, a lead singer who approximates sort of a cross between the Breeders and Suzi Quatro, the Dishes appear to be a band in touch with their punk roots. The aforementioned "Got Something to Tell You" introduces a brief repetitive vocal about Mommy, Daddy and Johnny having something to tell her. Her response is that "it isn't right to be a train that's on the wrong track", which is followed by 7 minutes of feedback-laden dual guitar sparring and bass warbling. A nod to the Velvet Underground's "White Light-White Heat", this song has an unforced groove that transcends the track length. It's a song that's equally successful to listen, wash your car or have very dirty sex to.

While there are a lot of inspired moments on the rest of the album, no other song quite matches up to their impressive start. What sounds like a very live recording, replete with feedback, out of tune guitars and audio hum, producer Tim Kerr captures an intense energy and garage quality that makes up for the sparse arrangements and lack of musical dynamics. What seems clear is that the Dishes must be an exciting live band who really can cut it in front of an audience. It begs the question, why do a studio recording at all? Why not simply record a few live gigs and put that out instead?

That being said, there are lots of great moments on the disc. "I'm a Man" has a great tribal drum intro by Mike Tsoulos, the lone male in the band, that leads into a Bleach-era Nirvana sonic blast followed by Staskauskas's ironic musings. "Use Your Arms" (and not your eyes) is an aggressive come on that dovetails nicely with "Flim Flam" where she takes on a pick-up artist and seems to have the upper hand. "Hot Wired" has a glam treatment - kind of a Ramones meets Gary Glitter. And "Blow Me Up" closes out the album with a neo-punkabilly rumble featuring some of the best singing, snare play and band arrangement on the record.

While this album probably isn't going to push the punk genre at all, it is a record with a lot of juice. Staskauskas is a singer with charisma to spare, and this is a ballsy piece of music. In the future, I'd be more interested in either a real live record in front of an audience, or a proper studio recording where some of the band's apparent talent could be more interestingly tapped.