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The Chicago three-piece have an uncanny knack for constructing gleaming, crystalline, compact pop gems ... and then going after them with an axe like Jack Nicholson. They build the museum-worthy sculpture, and then dash it to the ground, manically laughing their heads off the whole time. It's the musical equivalent of a Pollock painting β a vibrant, technicolor, utterly uninhibited work devised by either a genius or a madman. It's hard to discern which, and it doesn't much matter anyway. The poet laureates of Chicago's skid row, VICTORIAN HALLS are the rare type of band that exist in the little space where art and punk meet - the type of band that can blend unadulterated pop songwriting with wailing Banshee-like vocals to create a strangely magical, vaudevillian wonder like their new seven song EP, Springteen. "We write pop songs," singer/guitarist Sean Lenart plainly states, "but they're really noisy and lyrically overt, and kind of jarring. It's not simply generalized feelings over familiar chord progressions... Basically, your mother wouldn't like this band." Then again, nobody's mother liked THE BEATLES when they first landed either. The result speaks for itself. In the Spin Magazine-sponsored Music Nation contest, the band made quite the impression, finishing second out of thousands of entries, and in doing so garnered praise from some big names - Perry Farrell of JANE'S ADDICTION called VICTORIAN HALLS' music a "high-strung theatrical sound ... punchy and tight, the