You never know what you're going to get when you go to Target and play "Eenie Meenie Miney Mo" at the CD racks.  Sometimes you stumble upon a group you'll love for years (that's how this reviewer discovered Disturbed) and sometimes you end up wishing you'd bought ten bucks worth of chewing gum.  Luckily, the outstretched finger of fate landed on the Sick Puppies' debut album "Dressed Up as Life." 

Shimon Moore, Emma Anzai and Mark Goodwin are gaining fame where a lot of groups are getting their first listeners -- on Myspace.  Yet this group's well-rounded and dynamic sound should coax you into investing the money for their album.  The thing that really stands out about this group is just when you think you've got their sound pegged, they take their sound somewhere else, and the result is a journey of remarkable flexibility.

Some would describe their sound as hardcore rock with a smooth edge, a kind of controlled angry music that picks and chooses its intensity peaks.  It's refreshing to see a singer with the vocal ability to scream, yet the flexibility to make it musical, a quality some artists have abandoned in the name of being totally hardcore. 

Flexibility is something this group is not short on.  "Dressed Up as Life" contains twelve different songs, twelve different melodies, twelve different moods, not just one sound repeated twelve times like some popular artists.  The music isn't trying too hard to be hard, it's not afraid to be soft, but it'll still knock you on your posterior at times. 

On a side note, give credit to Sick Puppies for creativity in lyrics; in a time where most artists are filling our ears with vague references to pain and inner struggle, they dare to write a whole song about a jerk father.  So what if you don't like it? That's what they wanted to write.  That's what they are.  It's so empowering to see a band making that kind of statement. 

There's a lot of statements in this album, but the one thing it says to me is that they're not afraid to have a constantly changing sound instead of leaning on one sound that seels.  It's that fearlessness and flexibility that will sell you on "Dressed Up as Life." Pick up a copy and rock out with them before they blow up (and time is running short).