I blame Thee Oh Sees for giving the nomenclature of garage rock a (somewhat) sullied name. There are so many releases released under that crusty umbrella now, it’s impossible to keep track and it leaves brilliant albums like Weirdon (Drag City Records) left in a shuffle. No wonder we can still, probably, talk about Philadelphia’s Purling Hiss in the infrequent (sorry) breaths of this Primitive Futures column. We can and we have for years, way back when Mike Polizze was scuzzing it up in Birds of Maya, so why wouldn’t we continue the trend, as Weirdon is his most realized, and by simple circumstance of immediate pop, “commercial” release to arrive in my mailbox?

Weirdon instantly reminds me of the day when Dinosaur Jr. succumbed to the alternative nation by ditching roughshod fidelities and extended guitar solos in favor of sweeter melodies and semi-gloss. It’s kind of the same thing here, most noticeable on Weirdon’s lead “Forcefield of Solitude” and later on tracks like “Another Silvermoon” and the rousingly catchy “Aging Faces.” It’s no revelation that the nü-arena hooks of the ’90s are a key ingredient in the ’10s indie rock. Calling anything besides Alice in Chains “grunge” these days is passe, as it wasn’t as much a sound as it was an incorrect genre tag trying to lump it all together. But wait, this is garage rock! To be fair, as much as Polizze is aiming for Nirvana on “I Don’t Wanna’ Be A…,” it’s also indebted to the legendary Boyce/Hart nugget, “(I’m Not Your) Steppin’ Stone.” Polizze follows that up with the thrift trap of “Airwaves,” something more akin to Nick Lowe than Soundgarden.

Weirdon doesn’t get “weird” or suitably fucked for the pages of Primitive Futures until the demented folk of “Running Through My Dreams,” but even that’s a beautiful fever of maudlin chords and hum-inducing melody. Eight-plus-minute closer “Six Ways to Sunday,” with the refrain of “Hollywood, I’ll be good,” is perhaps Polizze’s confessional about his want for radio-friendly status and acceptance of having to lower the volume to do it, but meanwhile the guitars rage out of control in a mid-tempo Crazy Horse–ian static. It’s epic and proof that his ambitions are absolutely possible as the tides seem to be changing.