Can our carousel handle two retro-lovin' pop eccentrics in the same week? Well, it's just gonna have to, because joining the master Ariel Pink in the racks this week is an oddball from north of the border, one that is actually more of a chameleon that the remarkable Mr. Rosenberg: Toronto's Slim Twig.

Though only 24, Slim has been doing the re-invention thing for the better part of a decade now, as an actor, record producer (he's produced the upcoming album from the equally excellent U.S. Girls) and performer. His 2008 EP Vernacular Violence was all twisted psychobilly, it was beatnik No Wave meets noise on the 2009 album Contempt! and now he's made what qualifies as his most "rock" effort yet, Sof' Sike. Rock that is, with ironic tongue ever in cheek.

You'd be right in figuring the second word of that  album title referred to the psychedelic impulses on the record. You'd also be right in assuming that Slim Twig is the sort of artist (not unlike Ariel) to yell "Sike!" and throw you a curve ball just when you think you're beginning to figure him out. 

And there's much to warm up to here, if you can warm to weirdos. Opener "The Shortest Path to Hell" is a bouncy rag, the devilishly dark "Labeija Pendarvis" has a title, if not a sound, that's an homage to the great vogue ball doc Paris Is Burning, "I'll Always Be a Child" is Roy Orbison's black sheep grandson, and "Madeline Has a Body" is pulsatingly provocative. "Priscilla" is a standout, its farfisa-fueled Nick Cave-ish croon complemented by a video released easrlier in the summer, featuting a greased-back annd ducktailed Slim hanging in what appears to be a house of ill repute. That would figure. Three years ago he had the song "Brothl Hunting", and on the last album there was "Young Hussies". It's good to have a muse. 

It's one thing to be an out-there character. It's another to do it and make consistently fascinating records. And Slim Twig has done that once again, with Sof' Sike.