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Welcome to the eye of what came to be called--during the late winter of 2002 in a small recording studio outside of Denton, TX-- the "shit storm," so named for the sheer number of songs Centro-matic scribe Will Johnson brought to the recording sessions for this, the band's seventh full-length album. Consider that Johnson has released more than 200 songs--spread over more than 13 albums, EPs, compilations, 7-inches, side-projects and solo records--since turning in his drumsticks to Dallas band Funland in 1996, and you start to sense what a Centro-matic shit storm might entail.

Even more remarkable is the fact that each of the songs culled from the epic sessions is a keeper, a classic even. Taken together, they add up to the finest album yet by these celebrated working-class heroes of the TX underground. Veering from tattered, haunting folk dirges that sound like they wafted in directly from On the Beach to brutally catchy skronk anthems the likes of which have made Centro-matic the most reliably kick-ass live band in the Lone Star state, Love You Just the Same (named after one of the Johnson anthems that didn't make the cut) doesn't let up until the breathy ooh's of its towering closer "Without You" have melted into silence. Distressed drums splatter up against the speakers, guitars whisper and roar, organs moan, pianos explode. And Johnson raises his voice over it all like a weather-beaten flag as his lyrics loosen from bunched knots of surreal verbiage into the catchiest and most affecting reel of la la la's since Tears for Fears first sent you Head Over Heels. Each and every song on Love You Just the Same boasts Centro-matic's particular uncanny combination of emotional urgency and pop accessibility, each is an obtuse indie koan and an arena-rock fist-pumper rolled into four perfect minutes.

Over a constant and grueling regimen of American and European touring with bands like Ben Kweller, the Promise Ring, Burning Airlines, the Pernice Brothers, Varnaline, and Jay Bennett, Johnson and his team have built a rabid international fanbase and a reputation as one of the hardest-working rock bands in the country. More than any Centro-matic album yet, this one captures the sweat-drenched, beer-soaked tornado that the live band conjures up night after night in clubs the nation and world over. Centro-matic's rock-solid rhythm section (anchored by virtuosic drummer and producer Matt Pence and overlaid by bassist Mark Hedman) and cascading piano and throaty violin lines (provided by multi-instrumentalist Scott Danborn) provide Johnson's vocals and guitar with a foundation that can alternately lift him to the stars or burn away beneath his feet. When the latter happens and Johnson's songs are stripped bare and trembling (as on gently psych-tinged ballads like "All the Lightning Rods") the effect can be as comfy as Meddle-era Pink Floyd or as harrowing as Sewn to the Sky-era Smog, sometimes both at once. When it's the former (as on winning pop numbers like "Biology Tricks" and the unquestionable "Flashes and Cables"), the band pulls off a kind of alchemy, effortlessly fusing indie crash and power-pop crackle into what feels, for all the world, like the new classic rock.

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