There's a fine, very permeable line between unlistenable and brilliant. Icky Boyfriends, a primitive, late-1980s/early 1990s noise rock trio out of San Francisco, were both. They pulled it off in much the same way that the Shaggs and Half Japanese did -- not alternately, not hitting highs and lows, but by achieving both states simultaneously. It's hard to tell whether bands like this are geniuses or idiots, but there is no possibility that they are mediocre.

The Icky Boyfriends' lyrics are like an autistic child's stream of consciousness -- repetitive, unmodulated, minutely observant of the most trivial, unfiltered details. "Pigs", perhaps Icky Boyfriends' best-known song, runs 18 seconds and offers these inspiring lyrics: "I want to take some PCP and kill some pigs." (Jonathan Swift, the singer, says that the lyrics came from a secret taped meeting between Ezra Pound and T.S. Eliot at St. Elizabeth's Hospital, but this seems unlikely.) The singing comes in a single fractured burst, as if afro'd Swift had just been lightning-struck by ungovernable compulsion, the words spat out and discarded in a single burst. The other songs are about incredibly mundane subjects, too, and sound like they were written on the spot about whatever had passed through Swift's field of vision in the preceding ten minutes. For instance, "Repress Yourself" opens with the lines, "Last night I went downtown / and then I went home / I went out to get a burrito / but they had stopped making them," then slips in the insult, "You keep on talking to me / just like the McLaughlin Group / you're about as interesting as Campbell's Soup." Shea Boyd's guitar lines are also mind-numbingly simple and often borrowed -- "Flying Monkeys" sounds a lot like a less technically adept "I Wanna Be Your Dog", while "Closet" lifts the MC5's "Kick Out the Jams" riff. And the drums, bashed and flailed and crashed through by Anthony Bedard, are from another planet, accidentally polyrhythmic as they clatter perilously away from the beat. A Love Obscene's liner notes tell of a band that was constantly being dragged off-stage and banned from clubs, who produced only sporadic singles and EPs during their brief existence, a trio of fuck-ups and also-rans.

Despite all of this, or maybe because of it, A Love Obscene is undeniably brilliant, as unfiltered and unpracticed and gut-level appealing as the Ramones or the Dead Boys. "Frank's Mom" joins The Angry Samoans' "I'm in Love with Your Mom" as one of the great dirty songs about people's mothers, its monster riff attached to lyrics about a woman caught buying a new dental dam, with no husband around and a police car always in the driveway. "Kids in Fresno" slashes and burns its way through a run-on story about a murderous child ("My little brother killed 20 economics students... and he was a good child") and trailer park life. "Passion Assassin" builds a dirty electric groove out of detuned guitar and drums, as Swift bemoans the taste of spermicidal jelly. It's all completely anarchic, unbeholden, uncontrollable, and you feel that literally anything could happen, which is how punk rock is supposed to make you feel.

With two CDs, 57 tracks and just under two hours of material, A Love Obscene is probably more Icky Boyfriends that most people want, at least in one sitting. You'll want to keep it on hand, though, ready to pull out the next time someone starts telling you how "punk" Avril Lavigne is or how subversive early Madonna videos could be. Like snakebite serum, it will take the swelling down right away.