4 out of 5

Produced by: Phil Ek

Label: Sub Pop

Existing on the four-trackier side of the rough and tumble Zepp-esque rock of following Sea to Shining Sea, Destination 2000’s computer glitchy cover and occasional electro beats play like a gag on futurism, the album dropping the year before the millenium.  But the music and lyrics are firmly rooted in a 70s fog smoked through 90s Seattle rock, Jayne chanting about something or other – drinking, life as the common man – while he and his bandmates hustle through some awesome riffs and noisy pummeling, sharpened to a rough-hewn edge by Ek’s production.

Destination is probably one of the group’s more tonally focused affairs, without segues into noise or folk or pop, but it’s not without its wanderings: Freedom Dop is sort of a pointless reverby buzzy beat track and closer Body Double – like the closer on Sea – has the group struggling with how to effectively build to something, even requiring the song to be split into two non-distinct halves, the divide noted only by the fact that it’s literally two tracks on the disc.  To be clear, the overwhelming majority of the tracks are great, hitting their stride right away with a beefy guitar rip and Jayne’s distorted yelp, but LaL are very much about gusto, and so when they try to push that formula too far, the album / song loses focus.  Thankfully, sequencing puts most of this at the disc’s end, packaging together a pretty great 30 or so minutes of trashy rock n’ roll for our listening pleasures.