Worldwide lovers of the finer things are rejoicing at the news that Mudhoney, yep Mudhoney, is back in action in 2008 with The Lucky Ones, the band's eighth full album in a mere 20 years of triumphant rocking. Deliberately and aggressively raw, The Lucky Ones sounds as lean and as full-on as any modern equivalent one cares to mention. Recorded in a scant 3.5 days (including overdubs) with Tucker Martine (who also recorded four songs on the previous album), Mudhoney went in armed with a batch of new material expecting to spend a fair amount of time getting it right. Bang-and bang again after some mixing-and a new album was birthed in record time, faster than anything else the band's done to date. The grand majority of these numbers were intentionally written "from the rhythm up" instead of from the riff and the lyrics down. The effect is to thrust out the bottom-end rumble of drummer Dan Peters and bassist Guy Maddison, and to bring about a cohesive whole not entirely ruled by the almighty riff-although you certainly don't have to look hard to find 'em. Opening The Lucky Ones, the band defiantly looks twenty years of heaviness and critical hosannas in the eye and spits out the anthemic "I'm Now," an existential place where "the past makes no sense, the future looks tense." Finding eager new converts locked firmly in the present who'll agree should not prove difficult.