A Place to Bury Strangers

OK, I got The Rough Guide to Highlife today and have a question regarding Track 2.
Towards the end, at around 4:50, there's either a "sound effect" on the record, or my CD has a small "skip".
Any one else hear this?

"Che," me pappy said, "man who makes an assertion, without making an argument, ain't worth a warm bucket of duck urine." A wise man, me pappy. Though at the time I didn't even know ducks had to pee. Thought they just recycled it. Point is, nothing shuts people up faster than saying those two magic words: Prove it.

"Best rock band in America." Prove it. Can't? Then it's just flackery.

Hark, the deafening silence.

Wussy at AMPLYFi, L.A.: Would you believe that the best rock band in America (according to no less an authority than Robert Christgau, the Dean of American Rock Critics himself, here), unable to get its own L.A. club booking, appeared smack in the middle of a bill at an all-ages venue off an alley in back of the Happy Days-style Astroburger drive-through on Melrose next to the Paramount lot before a crowd that couldn’t have numbered more than 50 in a space the size of a suburban rec room? Well, me neither, but this was the first L.A. appearance for the Cincinnati-based band—fronted by former **** Ponys lead singer Chuck Cleaver and his ex-wife Lisa Walker—after five full-length albums and an EP since 2005. After rolling up in their van, the group posed for pictures with a blogger, then took the stage at precisely 9 p.m., apologizing for the lack of banter, better to squeeze in 10 songs in the half-hour they were allotted, starting with a mesmerizing “Funeral Dress” from the album of the same name, then into “Pulverized” and “Mountain of Tires” from their most recent effort, Strawberry. Within seconds, I was transported back in time 36 years ago, when I first saw Television at CBGB, camped myself in front of the stage with a big, ****-eating grin, luxuriating in the lush sound and indelible melodies, this cross between vintage X and Richard and Linda Thompson. Cleaver and Walker exchanged one-liners like they were arguing in the bedroom, with the rest of us eavesdroppers, the maelstrom given a plaintive country edge thanks to John Erhardt’s sawing pedal steel. The ethereal “Pizza King” gives way to the back-and-forth “Airborne” (“You love me but you really don’t love me”), the cathartic “Waiting Room,” with its almost unbearably intimate memories (Walker sings, “It’s funny what you do, do to get my goat/Well honey you’re the pain and the antidote,” only to have Cleaver respond: “I remember puking down the side of the car/The cost of drinking liquor from the mouth of jar”). By the time they got to the closing “Rigor Mortis,” the lucky gathering wouldn’t let them leave even as they reluctantly gave way to the fourth of five bands still scheduled to play that evening. “I will sling the epithets at everyone but you,” wails Walker over a grungy roiling beat that grabs like an undertow, the set suddenly over, but the room still vibrating as the band begins to pack up their gear and load up the van for another stop, leaving us all blown away by what we’d just seen and heard. It might’ve been just another night for Wussy, but one to remember for those of us lucky to be there with the best band in America.