"Wake up! Can you hear me?" So begins "Cut Your Ribbon," the lead track on Wiretap Scars, the first full-length offering from El Paso, Texas' Sparta. The album is both a logical extension of, and a quantum leap beyond, the ragged promise of the three-song-and-one-remix Austere EP, released in March of 2002. Wiretap Scars is the sound of the underdog triumphant.

"Before Sparta, I was struggling," Jim Ward recalls, "trying to find a happy, ideologically perfect place. Once Paul [Hinojos] suggested pursuing what is now Sparta, there was no more questioning. It felt undoubtedly, wholeheartedly the right thing to do. And the writing process was totally and immediately carefree, loose and happy. Knowing each other so well music-wise made for good chemistry, but the new energy has made for a really welcome chapter in all of our lives."

When Ward talks of chapters in the members of Sparta's lives, he's not exaggerating: There's history there. Despite their relatively tender ages, the various members go back as bandmates and peers at least to 1994. The family tree begins with Ward, Paul Hinojos and Tony Hajjar playing in at the drive-in, which Ward co-founded in 1994, and intersects with bassist Matt Miller's former band, Belknap, and the Restart label. Restart was founded by Ward and Hinojos as an outlet for other El Paso artists. It released Austere (with DreamWorks) and has also issued records by Universal Recovered, Airplanes Are Better and more.

If El Paso has the dubious distinction of shaping the sound and aesthetic of Sparta from day one, Wiretap Scars works in color and perspective from all corners of the world. Growing up on the Texas/Mexico border, the band members