Back in early 2000, Scott McCaughey took the stage of Lounge Ax in Chicago with Wilco standing in as his backing band and barreled through a set of quickly composed and completely unrehearsed songs in one of the vaunted venue's very last sets. A few days later, while the Ax was closing its doors for good, McCaughey was back in Washington state spending a day in the studio with one of his typically intriguing assemblages of mid-level rock stars. A core band featuring McCaughey, John Ramberg, R.E.M.'s Peter Buck and ex-Ministry drummer Bill Rieflin hammered those same songs into shape in roughly the amount of time it takes to bake beans in a slow-cooker, and then allowed the resulting album, awkwardly titled In Rock, to disappear into collector-geek obscurity: He pressed 1000 copies and sold them all at a single show.
But such a fate was not what those songs deserved, and thankfully, McCaughey and Yep Roc Records realized this. The version of In Rock they've now dropped on the world at large isn't exactly the record that hardcore indie-pop fans have been overpaying for on the internet auction circuit-- McCaughey has cut two songs and added four new ones. The liners don't bother to point out which of these tracks weren't a part of the original release, but it hardly matters; the material all melds pretty well and everything is played with spontaneous abandon, as befits these sickly sweet confections, several of which rank among the finest McCaughey has placed on a Minus 5 album.
Most of these songs are short and to the point, laced with McCaughey's trademark wit and served with a short stack of harmony vocals and a lot of fuzzy guitar. Opening instrumental "Bambi Molester", named for the Croatian surf band with which Buck and McCaughey have recently associated, nearly drowns in that fuzz, its surf beat and Dick Dale-ish guitar lines completely subverted by distortion. "Where the Wires Meet the Skies" uses a buzzing, frenetic SoCal backing to the advantage of McCaughey's great vocal melody-- about the only thing the song's missing is a big, blaring horn section, an absence they've filled with backing vocals and Big Muff-laden guitars. The tumbling "whoa-oh-oh-oh"s of "Courage Is the Smallest Bird" stick to the roof of your brain like rubber cement, while "The Girl I Never Met" hits the lounge with acoustic guitars fluttering.
Lounge Ax gets a direct mention in "The Night Chicago Died Again", a jokey song about a terrible flood that hits Chicago, though the Ax stays open. Over a Georgia Satellites-ish backing, McCaughey gets in his best lines detailing which members of the band Chicago were killed in the disaster: "Among the casualties/ Daniel Seraphine, Cetera, Lamm & Pankow/ Not Terry Kath, but the guy who replaced him." If that song skirts the edge of goofball overkill, though, "Dr. Evil: Doctor of Evil" crosses it entirely with its new-wave stomp and motormouthed spoken verses. The song also manages to directly quote The Youngbloods' "Get Together" in its breakdown, one of a litany of moments that could've been danced to in the 60s (or the 70s-- McCaughey predicts you'll "do the strand" on "Cosmic Jive").
After this year's earlier, darker I Don't Know Who I Am: Let the War on Music Begin, Vol. 2 and the strangely lackluster Down with Wilco, In Rock is a hugely welcome blast of pure pop mayhem from one of its finest practitioners. It's basically everything you'd want in a modern, self-aware power-pop album, proudly referential of its influences, but never reverent toward them, and insidiously catchy for all but a few of its 35 minutes. And to think, most of us nearly missed a chance to hear it.
