This is the second Matador album from the San Francisco duo who served as Bjork's backing band, scored gay porn movies, and most recently, are famed for their experiments mixing actual plastic surgery sounds with beats. "The Civil War" once again represents a total departure: beats meet folk/bluegrass, closely miked acoustic instruments, and honky-tonk mixed with highly unorthodox samples such as the pounding of blood in MC Schmidt's carotid artery. "The kind of thing that gives the avant-garde a good name. And the medical establishment a bad one"--NME.