FOUR STARS: That said, this album simply amazed me - a great amount of music goes past my ears every month - it's so nice to find something that suprises and amazes me. Recommended for those sick of modern rock or whatever they call it now.

Barging into the room like a rowdy drunk, Captain Tonic stops traffic with "The Distinguished Mr. and Mrs. Ruddle," a mariachi-flavored romp about a once-swinging couple past their prime and their space-cadet son who "found a super nova in a can of cola." So begins Chair, the second album by Captain Tonic and one of the most thoroughly entertaining records I've heard in a dog's age. Richly textured, soulful, ruefully humorous, dashingly erudite, swank yet approachable, this San Francisco-based band will at times remind you of Tindersticks and The Divine Comedy (thanks in no small part to Benjamin Smith's lugubrious croon), at others Steely Dan (as Patrick Greene runs up a tab on Walter Becker), at still others Glen Campbell, Marvin Gaye or Willie Nelson. It's not rock, no, not at all. It's something more. If you thirst you shall be quenched, my friends.

I really cannot see too many people not enjoying this CD! I highly recommend it!

If your in the mood for a jacked up throaty vocal and feeling a bit lonesome, grab a six of Heineken, fix a bologna and cheese sandwich. Just don't forget the lyric sheet on your way to your favorite comfy chair. Slap that baby in and let her spin!

Captain Tonic's Chair opens iwth a simple spoken introduction and the song "The Distinguished Mr. and Mrs. Ruddle" - giving the listener an epiphany: "So this is what it would sound like if Nick Cave and Jonathan Richman started a band with Cake and Andrew Bird's Bowl of Fire. In other words, it's some weird, dark, fun stuff.

Singer Benjamin Smith's slurring baritone shows a certain kinship with Cave and Leonard Cohen and sits smack in the middle of these swirling, mad tracks. Tunes like "My Small Bed" read like Charles Bukowski poems while "Yesterday My Hamster is, well, very, very strange and compelling and funny. "Lonely Guy #104" shows a skewed novelist's eye in lyric writing worthy of David Lowery.

Throughout Chair Captain Tonic deliver murky, excellently played songs on refreshingly uncommon themes.

One of the best new bands in the bay area in the spirit of Mark Eitzel and the Loud Family.