Longest Meow
With two albums behind them, Bobby Bare Jr.'s Young Criminals Starvation League have evolved from an eccentric backing band into a collective with a mind and sound of their own. Though he's rarely meticulous in the studio, Bare now pushes (or perhaps is pushed by) the rotating cast to the brink of chaos. 11 people playing 11 songs in 11 hours (not counting a few overdubs) should be a numerological train wreck. Surprisingly,The Longest Meowis the best sounding album Bare Jr. has ever made, with vibraphone, electric piano, harmonica, and hand percussion flashing around the dynamo of electric guitars, thrashing drums, and blasting horns. When the band kicks into "The Heart Bionic" they may echo the oldBare Jr.stoner metal--only now they have a seditious force worthy of the MC5 or the Replacements. Bare's compulsive loathing sometimes seems like a shtick evenhedoesn't believe, but the band--including members of Clem Snide, My Morning Jacket, ...And You Will Know Us by the Trail of Dead, and longtime East Nashville pal Michael "Grimey" Grimes--does. They ride the riffs, expanding them into rumba-like grooves on "Sticky Chemical" (which Deanna Varagona's baritone sax turns into a lost Los Lobos track), psychedelic jammage on "Snuggling World Championships" and "Borrow Your Cape," plush country waltzes and shuffles on "Mayonnaise Brain" and "Back to Blue," and primitive garage rock on "Uh Wuh Oh" (exactly the kind of stupid fun singalong implied by the title). Bare has written better collections of songs, but his pinched wail puts the bite to visions of damnation like "Demon Valley"--an absurd inferno in which Sonny sings to Cher and "the Pope is coming over" to hang--and "Stop Crying," in which the singer's own soul cooks to a cinder. For Bare, hell remains more fun than heaven and self-torture has never sounded like such a party.--Roy Kasten