Stomping Grounds, the new full-length from Ohio-based Circus Devils, blasts off with a full side of brash, catchy rock ’n’ roll featuring the vocal bravado of Robert Pollard (Guided by Voices) at full tilt. The album’s flipside detours into more psychedelic territory, offering a mixture of weird and pretty vignettes.

Themes include the wasteland of regimented work-ruled living, sexually active geezers, lost girls, sick doctors and impressionistic recollections of the stomping grounds of boyhood. The album closes with the standout track “Sunflower Wildman (Remember Him?),” an anthemic prog-rock story song about a shut-in with dementia who chases boys away from his sunflow- er-choked yard.

Stomping Grounds is high listening adventure, more exciting than 90% of the movies you will see this year.

Listen to “Sunflower Wildman (Remember Him?)”

Stomping Grounds Tracklist:

1. Schedules of the Dead
2. Seeds of the Craft
3. Cold Joker
4. Hue an’ Dye
5. I’m Going In
6. Weed World
7. A Bumbling Reply
8. Girl in Space
9. Wise Man’s Lament
10. Dr. Pompous
11. Sunflower Wildman
12. Stomping Grounds
13. All the Rage
14. Where Hornsby Used to Live
15. The Liquid Observer
16. Sunflower Wildman (Remember Him?)