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"Twilight Distillery" by The Minus 5

Scott Mc Caughey is the ringleader of a rotating cast of musicians dubbed the Minus 5 that sometimes includes neo-folk, roots rock and power pop luminaries Peter Buck (R.E.M.), Jeff Tweedy (Wilco), Ken Stringfellow (the Posies) and John Wesley Harding, among others. In this role, Mc Caughey, the band’s sole tunesmith, pays little if any attention to current trends and developments in music. He’s quite satisfied to follow familiar roads mapped out by ’60s and ’70s masters of popcraft that have been immortalized and sanctified beyond reason. Contrary to one school of thinking, the Minus 5 proves that there is still a point to making this kind of music, that its viability didn’t end when the Beatles disbanded or the Byrds hung it up. Some of the pop clichés that Mc Caughey and company employ with great skill and success are clean, chiming guitars, relentless pulsation of piano chords with bouncy rhythms, sleigh bells and lots of ooh-la-la-type backing vocals. This is the way many aging punks that stay in music go; accessible songs with classic pop arrangements, various keyboards and some country and folk influence manifested in generous helpings of acoustic guitar strumming and some pedal-steel picking. But Mc Caughey and his stacked deck of a backing band do it better than most, and with a lot less pretension. The raucous, irreverent delivery of “Aw Shit Man” brings Mc Caughey’s other band, the Young Fresh Fellows, to mind: equal parts Buzzcocks and the Replacements, but most of the album is comparable to Golden Smog or the Traveling Wilburys. Despite Mc Caughey’s lyrical preoccupation with guns, alcohol and self-loathing on The Minus 5, his wry, sardonic take on hard knocks, bad decisions and their aftermath exceeds expectations and make this record much more fun than one might imagine.