Following the Same, Reliable Tracks

*** SOCIAL DISTORTION

“Somewhere Between Heaven and Hell”

Epic

There is nothing fancy or mysterious about Social Distortion. For the most part, this is the rock band that answers the question: What if battering rams could sing? SD’s fourth album doesn’t veer off the straight-ahead track the band has always followed. Rhythm guitars and bass churn low in the mix, thickening the sound like not-quite-solidified concrete, forming a launch pad for Mike Ness’ edgy but lyric guitar leads and the clean crack of Christopher Reece’s drumming. Producer Dave Jerden does a good job of balancing SD’s conflicting needs for clarity and for aural throb.

Ness’ love of country music is more pronounced here than ever. SD’s singer-songwriter starts with the essence of a good country song--a simple story that communicates an emotion, coupled with a melody that makes you want to hum along--and applies his distinctive, chest-cold sneer of a voice, some nice high harmonies, and Social Distortion’s engine-blast attack. The result is the band’s catchiest, most consistent album. Like Neil Young & Crazy Horse, whose molten twang this album recalls, Social Distortion has found a satisfying, uninhibited way to apply rock’s noise and thrust to country roots. There’s fondness, but no politeness or self-consciousness, in the way SD tears into a couple of ‘50s-vintage country tunes, the heartbreak standard “Making Believe” and the rockabilly-tinged “King of Fools.”

The album has no weak tracks, as SD musters enough clout and tunefulness to overcome the stock situations of the two least-distinctive originals here, “99 to Life” (a standard prison lament that pales beside Ness’ brilliant 1988 song “Prison Bound”) and “Bye Bye Baby” (a routine kiss-off to a straying girlfriend).

Elsewhere, Ness sings blunt, almost willfully inarticulate (but never foolish) lyrics that get to the crux of how it feels to be dumped by a woman or cursed by fate. It’s not the words, but the emphatic feelings and memorable tunes attached to them, that distinguish the album’s best songs, notably the snarling but infectious “Bad Luck.”

While most of these songs are hard-luck stories, only the propulsive “Cold Feelings” deals in darkness and dread. Ness can’t conceal his swaggering delight in “Born to Lose,” a song about a dead-end kid, not unlike himself, who finds a way to win. “Ghost Town Blues,” the closing track, winds up with the protagonist deciding there’s a better way out of lovelorn desolation than swinging on the gallows he conjures in his mind; instead, with wry fatalism, he sets about finding another woman and starting the cycle of pleasure and pain all over again.

Social Distortion isn’t poetic (although Ness tosses off a few ambitious images that rise above his usual terseness), and it doesn’t break new ground. But it has forged a distinctive sound, it’s smart enough to sing only about what it knows, and it knows how to pummel the body while seducing the ear.