realize that I should be in a better mood this time of year, but when the weather starts getting warmer and summer starts approaching, I get filled with the dread of jobs unfinished. My plan to hit the gym hard so I can kick sand in the faces of dudes on the beach? That lasted about a week and a half. My search for a new, rewarding job by the beginning of June? It stalled under the weight of my own laziness. Summer just reminds me about how many of my resolutions have gone unfulfilled at their halfway point. But one warm-weather chore has already been covered. I have found my 2004 summer album; The Thermals' sophomore effort, Fuckin A .

From the opening, you realize you're in for a fun ride, t hanks in part to the solid production of Death Cab For Cutie's Chris Walla. Gone is the flat, low-fi sound of their debut album, More Parts Per Million . Instead, as the lead-off track ?Our Trip? indicates, Fuckin A rocks with a fullness that only enhances the groups spitfire blasts of post-punk fury. It's everything a good summer album should be. Drums pound, bass lines actually rumble rather than hide behind the treble of the guitar, and singer Hutch Harris' previously annoying nasal whine becomes an urgent call-to-arms.

And call he does. Harris's lyrics take a much more direct political approach this time. Take ?Keep Time,? for example, which puts Bush's War on Terror under the microscope: ?We're past our sense/past the consequence?We project a win/We protect our skin/An eye on fate/like any good nation.? The band isn't holding back their anger, either. On ?God and Country,? they go right for the jugular: ?Pray for a new state/pray for assassination.? And the closing outburst of ?Top of the Earth? puts our government's true motivations in question: ?Blood, sand, and soil and cheap motor oil/Our union, our movement, our greatest high, the shit we die for.? Hell, even their website features a picture of our Commander-in-Chief with the word ?Void? stamped on his forehead.

But that's not to say the Thermals have moved into Rage Against the Machine-type political extremism. Relationships still come under their critical eye, and boy, are they critical. ?Anything you can grasp can easily pass to the ashtray,? Harris sings on ?Remember Today,? before admitting that a lost love has caused him to ?find the morning paralyzing.? And could the lyrics to ?Let Your Earth Quake, Baby? be any more cynical of the toll that love can have on a person: ?Keep me deaf and muted/Slap me ?til I'm stupid/ I'm dying for your hand/I'd die to understand.?

Despite the severity of Harris's apparent cynicism at the state of the world today, the music boils over with a bubbly mix of punk and pop that is irresistibly catchy. Brought out in the open, Kathy Foster's bass is able to propel each song forward, making the album's 28 minute running time seem that much shorter. Add to that the rock-solid thud of Jordan Hudson's drums, and you've got a record that's just begging to be played, and played LOUD. Fucking a, indeed.