But songs such as “The Diabetic Coma” held me down like a comic book supervillain trapping me in a dense magnetic force field, laughing maniacally while giant robotic minions smashed the metropolis. (The song’s not really about giant robots though, it’s about Jon comparing himself to a maladaptive pancreas. All the better.) If only the club were filled with dozens of other angry white geeks who’ve read Our Band Could Be Your Life cover to cover, I’d be up there with them pogoing, sweating happy fury and almost moshing. But the crowd stood still, I had to save my energy to drum and so I slumped against the wall and let the giant robots run amok.

The Slats aren’t all aggro, though. For every strand of stripped-down Wire, there’s a couple of sensitive, off-key guitars and voices guided by Pollard. Although I noticed this at Siberia, it wasn’t until I heard Pick It Up in the privacy of my home that I noticed how their knack for hooks and twisting-the-titty-of-cliche lyricism occasionally rivals GBV at their most sweet and surreal (“Put your head down on my shoulder/I’m just a saber-toothed cobra”). You’d think the hooks would be something I’d notice the first time, but well, lotsa gin, and I was probably still thinking of giant robots.

However, the centerpiece of Pick It Up, “Teena,” is the most transcendent moment. It features some of the greatest hooks The Cars never wrote (or did they?) set to a story I think is about a guy who poisons his girlfriend with cyanide and leaves her to die but not before telling her, “I’ll be in New York if you make it out.” The impeccably de-tuned bridge ensures mersh radio won’t touch it, though if there’s any justice, college stations of the future will. Not all of the songs on Pick it Up are this addictive, but a lot of them come close. Sometimes (particularly during the last two proper tracks), I wished they’d work with the editor that Pollard doesn’t have either.