#lo tom

Fast forward to the end times, the locked down times, the guy-with-a-guitar-on-a-couch-live-streaming times, and Lo Tom is gloriously out of step. There’s nothing quiet, nothing inward-looking, no skittery glitch beats infused with inchoate dread here. This is a burly, big hearted rock album, with dual guitars roaring in dissonance, bass lines so dense you could walk on them and rocketing, gut-shocking drums. It has its complications, the sneaky anthemry of the melodies which seem just loud and brawny but end up lodged in your head, the wry, clever lyrics, the way Bazan’s voice blisters and breaks with sincerity, even as he slips a clever word trick into the mix. And yet, if music was a meal, this would be a diner platter, mostly meat dunked in gravy, some sort of potato, a few vegetables for show and then pie afterwards with coffee.

The songwriting is, no surprise, rather good, never better than in “Don’t Look at Me,” a surging banger about dissolution under the stage lights. The song concerns a rock musician who likes the work, but not the constant attention. It could be about Cobain or Mark Kozelek or any number of other people who’ve fallen apart in front of us. It could be about Bazan himself, I guess. He’s always seemed well adjusted, but he definitely has a certain sympathy for the topic in a wailed out chorus of, “Don’t look at me, my head’s under water, don’t look at me, I’m all used up, don’t look at me, the worst thing I could figure, is for any of you to feel like this, don’t look at me.”

Several of these songs—“Don’t Look at Me,” “In the Van” and “The Show”—are about the touring/recording life that has encircled Bazan since he was a teenager. That last song, “The Show,” is a stomper, bending a big Van Halen-ish riff around the conflicts between performing and regular life. The drums pound and the bass crunches as Bazan declares, “All I want to do is sleep,” and the band, in falsetto, answers, “The show must go on.”

The members of Lo Tom have known each other since childhood and their joy in and comfort with playing together is palpable. If the songs aren’t quite as knotty as Pedro the Lion cuts, they rock a good deal harder. They hit hard enough to leave a mark, and even the most joyful choruses are shaded with sadness, but you come out feeling rough and untouchable and resilient.  Just what you needed.