"Taste the Wine" sounds like Queen, if they had been from Alabama, and even though "Diaghalev Was Right" spells the Russian ballet dancer's name wrong, it's the best blues-rock song about a Russian ballet dancer I've ever heard. It might well be the only blues-rock song about a Russian ballet dancer I've ever heard. The opening riff of "Intolerable" sounds like "Thriller," but in a strangely exciting way, and if Ally McBeal were still on air, "Wolves" would be one of those songs she'd hear in her head when she's walking down the street after a long, crazy day of work: "Good girls don't play anymore / they don't dream all night and all day anymore / but they still cry."
Yes, all of those strings are actual strings, not synthesizers, and the same goes for all of those horns and "vaudevillian sound effects." "You're either on the swim team or you're not," sings Levitan on "Swim Team"; if we're gonna listen to music like this at practice, sign me up for the freestyle.
