This week I've been playing Last Exit off of some of the other records that have struck me as particularly noteworthy this year, just to see how it sounds next to them. The straight answer is "weird," of course, since my favorite records this year are Decapitated's The Negation, Insision's Revealed and Worshipped, God Forbid's Gone Forever, and that Hold Steady record I talked about a couple of weeks back. But the other answer, and the one I've been driving at for several weeks, is that while I go to various albums to get various fixes, I find myself throwing on the Junior Boys when I want to experience the sort of I-have-been-transported emotion that I'd usually expect to get from Puccini. Decapitated approach it; the Hold Steady flirts with it & buys it Rum Royales at full price; God Forbid comes closest, boasting huge sweeping moments of pure feeling in many of its choruses. But Last Exit, in the guise of a dance record, is the deepest emotional ride I've heard all year. It shuns description like real-life experiences do. And so here I take my leave of it! I hope some of you run across it, and I hope it scathes you a little like it has me. There are worse listening experiences than emerging with scars.