It's always a cause for celebration when there's new stuff from Kid Congo Powers in the world. And with That Delicious Vice, his new album on In The Red Records, Kid and the Pink Monkey Birds serve up on their sharpest slices of rock to date.

"Wicked World", a duet with the legendary Alice Bag, is a twang-y racket. There's a lot of bad mojo here, and Kid and Alice are your guides to a trip through this wicked world. It's a punchy number, and a real highlight here. Elsewhere, "A Beast, A Priest" and the Howie Pyro-inspired "The Boy Had It All" mine similar territory. On each the guitar from Mark Cisneros scratches at your brain, licks from the Fifties and Sixties anchoring the cut as Ron Miller's pounding on the kit adds a heaviness to the material. Kid maintains a lightness of touch with this stuff that makes it both catchy and consistently fun, even if feels like we're hearing the songs a biker gang would play on a jukebox in some dustbowl town. I think that's the vibe they were going on.

Kid, Mark, and Ron somehow take the best of Nuggets-era stuff, surf rock, and punk and blend it all together into something unique. Fans of The Gun Club, Kid's band with the late Jeffrey Lee Pierce, will find lots here that offers up the same sorts of pleasures. And That Delicious Vice is, on the whole, the natural progression of the kind of material Kid's been pursuing and crafting for so many decades. Still, for all that's familiar, there are chances taken here, notably on the lovely "The Smoke is the Ghost" and "Murder of Sunrise", the epic closer. That one is really a showcase for Mark Cisneros and his axe. There's mood enough here for a Western, but the tune really hinges on that twang from the Cisneros guitar and Kid's licks.

That Delicious Vice by Kid Congo Powers & The Pink Monkey Birds is out via In The Red Records.

[Photo: Luz Gullardo]