Quadraphonic To Supersonic

Tony Peyser
Mirror contributing writer
  
   Quadraphonic Deluxe is what Marshall Crenshaw might have sounded like as a 1960s staff writer in The Brill Building. This fourth CD by Las Vegas-based Brian Jay Cline has his signature melodies with great hooks and lyrics with snappy lines. Whether he’s wistfully musing about fame in “Rock N Roll Heart” or cranking it up on the hit-the-town rave-up “Ready Steady Go,” Cline’s tracks have the ease of a bottle of beer that slides down a long wooden bar to a happy hour regular who grabs it without spilling a drop.
   Brady Harris’ Lone Star is Brit Pop mixed with country-rock. Harris (who now lives in Venice) is from Texas and his biography and musical geography mix together well. “Welcome Me Back” neatly combines pedal steel with Beatles-era harmonies. The graceful “Weekend In Detroit” manages to make 48 hours in the one of the toughest cities in the country sound as menacing as two nights in Carmel. You’ll feel like you’re in a London metro feeling suddenly retro. Great stuff.
   Stop and Let The Devil Ride is a raucous blues album by James Mathus Knockdown Society. Mathus co-founded Squirrel Nut Zippers but retro swing ain’t spoken here. If that Mamie Van Doren movie High School Confidential ever gets remade, this is music you’d hear at the big dance where the bad kids get a little too jiggy with it. So, is Malthus a faux white boy wanna be bluesman? No. He was born in Mississippi and it shows.
   More Delta roots are on display in Eddy “The Chief” Clearwater’s Rock ‘n’ Roll City which kicks it old school with liquored-up blues. On “Old Time Rocker,” Clearwater seems to have enticed Carl Perkins to hightail it back from the great beyond to play on it. The funky “Midnight Groove” sounds like Los Lobos took a break from recording Kiko to jam at an after hours club on the last night of Mardi Gras. There are just a handful of lyrics but Clearwater shouts the song’s title and lets out a laugh that’s riddled with mischief. With a track like this, Eddy proves he isn’t The Chief — he’s The Man.
   The band backing up Clearwater is Los Straitjackets, those all-American, Mexican wrestling mask-wearing instrumental maestros. Their seventh CD, Supersonic Guitars in 3-D, shoots off a heap of sparks. “San Diego Shutdown” feels like a surf guitar rumble on The Red Planet. When the drums take over, you can almost see the two-headed Martian girls in bikinis frugging.
   Miles Of Music has Quadraphonic Deluxe for $8.99 and Lone Star for $10.99. Amazon has Rock ‘N’ Roll City for $14.99, “Stop and Let The Devil Ride” for $13.99 and Supersonic Guitars In 3-D for $16.98. James Malthus plays Molly Malone’s on September 16 and The Echo on the 17.
   * In honor of Cruz Bustamante, The Goofy Band Name Of The Week is … Indian Bingo.