Pidgeon - Might As Well Go Eat Worms (2008)

Like their Bay Area contemporaries Deerhoof, Pidgeon are an agreeably quirky mixture of the noisy and the sweet, but their mixture is even more extreme. The noisy aspects of these songs, particularly the thrashy guitars and jackhammer rhythms, are quite noisy indeed, as is the screaming emo-dude male singer. But Pidgeon also includes a sweet-voiced female singer with a surprising vocal similarity to the Cardigans' Nina Persson, and these 12 songs also feature clever pop hooks and melodies along with all the aggressive noise. The combination works surprisingly well.