Wow, this album is really good. I’ve listened to it about 20 times, and I’ve recommended it to at least three people in the last week. And I’m not just saying this because the mastermind of the band, Todd Westover, was a drummer for The Bellrays. In fact, Toothpick Elbow couldn’t be more different from The Bellrays if they tried. And who knows, maybe they are trying...

Best Wishes, Toothpick Elbow’s first release as a formal band (rather than Westover’s solo side project), is dripping with psychedelic influences. There are long stretches throughout the album where you have to remind yourself that this is not a David Bowie record. Fortunately, the album doesn’t begin and end with Bowie; his is just one of the many wellsprings from which they draw. The genius of Best Wishes lies in the crazy-quilting of the band's influences -- glam, psych, folk and good old rock. Toss in some crazy moog and some freaked-out electric piano and you have a 21st Century flower-power rock album.

"Little Freaked Out", the eight minute behemoth, is also the disc's powerhouse track. Its extended instrumental opening sounds almost like a freakbeat version of the opening riff of Motley Crue’s "Kickstart My Heart". Okay, maybe I’m the only one in the world who hears it that way, but the point is, they evoke rock without bludgeoning us over the head with it. For rock-n-roll diehards such as myself, who usually want to be bludgeoned over the head with a screaming riff, this technique satisfies the same desire, but in a new and interesting way; they’ve replaced brute force with cunning and texture.

The other song that really stands out is "Let’s Race", a paean to fast cars and four-on-the-floor. Somehow Toothpick Elbow really managed to capture the feeling of speeding through a raceway, bending sound around corners, shifting chords like changing gears. If I ever get in a drag-race, I’m popping this one into the CD player.