Remember your sophomore year when that girl (let's call her Nicole) broke your heart, inspiring the most heartfelt poetry ever committed to paper? Months went by and slowly you initiated an awkward friendship. Then one day, in a callow act of unadulterated love that has forever mitigated your ability to emote, you dumped all three notebooks of that semantically challenged crap on her, knowing that if she were to just read through the first ten pages she would come running back.

Remember how she didn't? Well, that qualifies you to empathize with Slug of Minneapolis-based Atmosphere. Taking leave of his myriad hip-hop commitments (notably Anticon and Deep Puddle Dynamics), Slug embarks on the lyrical exorcism of the deified love of his life, Lucy Ford, on an album culled from three EPs formerly available only on vinyl.

The rhymes often bounce between insightful social observation (a la Saul Williams) and authentic old-school wordplay, making for great late-night ear candy. Such is the case with "Aspiring Sociopath," in which Slug marrs the sacred cow that is "Smells Like Teen Spirit" (as well as other classic radio staples) as he desperately depicts the realities of a latter-day American road warrior who can only find solace and connection in the songs that blare on his car stereo. Elsewhere, you can almost hear the mental pages of wry sophomore poetry being turned. "I bet my fans know me better than my friends do/ Because my friends don't pay that much attention/ The fans memorize every single sentence/ Which makes them far too smart to ever start a friendship."

But it's the eclectic and forbidding samples that make the disc a stark slice of modern Americana. The Mingus-style bass freak-out of "It Goes," the climactic refrain of "O' Holy Night" wafting through "If I Was Santa Claus"-- Atmosphere don't have the money to sample Sting and they're not afraid to show it. Rather, they make the most out of nothing and utilize their gloriously dirty production to great effect. Occasionally, it seems to be their recording technique which purveys a great deal of the album's intimacy rather than the content.

Whatever it is, it seems to work on varying degrees and fails completely only once. While Slug's direct comments to his enigmatic Lucy character are normally provoking, "Don't Ever Fucking Question That" stands out as that one overtly obsessive poem written in an emotionally inebriated state that sent your second chances at true high school romance down the shitter (along with your notebooks). Luckily, the song is crammed between two of the album's best tracks and its duration could be used to roll down the windows, slow down the car, and dial up Nicole.

-Kevin Adickes, October 30th, 2001