Girls Own Juice EP: Andrew W.K.

Parody is a tricky thing: You can't do it right if you can't perfectly duplicate your target. The most successful music parodists, from "Weird Al" Yankovic to Spinal Tap, long ago mastered this concept, carving out legacies built on a foundation of sublime mimicry. Andrew W.K., a 20-year-old who's lived in Detroit and New York City, may or may not be kidding on Girls Own Juice—which may or may not be a send-up of classic, over-the-top rock anthems, complete with the funniest cover art in recent memory. But the question of whether he's kidding, though it adds mystique, is moot: The kid is an absolutely amazing songwriter. A four-song EP dressed up with a 30-second throwaway ("Make Sex") and a two-minute instrumental bonus track (which follows no fewer than 41 minutes of dead air), the meat of Girls Own Juice comprises the title track, "Don't Ever Stop The Noise," "We Want Fun," and "Music Or Die," each of which is too joyful and anthemic to even comprehend. "We Want Fun," for example, swells through a thick, slickly self-produced assortment of big keyboard sounds until, two thirds of the way through, it hammers home the chant, "We wanna have fun and we wanna get wasted!" It just gets better and better the more (and louder) you listen to it, begging the question, "Does it even matter if this guy is serious" The answer is a resounding no: Andrew W.K. is either a brilliant parodist or a brilliant rocker. Regardless of his intentions, he's still brilliant. (Bulb Records, 323 Somerville Ave., Somerville, MA 02143; available for $9 postpaid)