Plums--but No Pumpkins--in This Batch of New Releases

No pumpkins in this pre-Halloween batch of local record releases, which includes the auspicious reunion of one of Orange County’s best but most overlooked rock bands, good, old-school funk from an unlikely corner of the globe and the first new material in six years from one of the top bands of the county’s early ‘80s punk-rock boom. The ratings scale is * (poor) to **** (excellent), with three stars denoting a solid recommendation.

***1/2 Pontiac Brothers

“Fuzzy Little Piece of the World”

Frontier

Success never came easily to the Pontiac Brothers. Actually, success never came at all for this fine Fullerton band, which made three admirable albums for the small, independent Frontier label before breaking up in frustration in 1988.

What does come easily to the Pontiacs is a knack for roughhouse, memorably melodic rock ‘n’ roll. After four years apart, singer Matt Simon, guitarist Ward Dotson, drummer D. A. Valdez and bassist Kurt Bauman got together with few commercial expectations and quickly knocked out this fuzzy little piece of exemplary work, just for old time’s sake.

The Pontiacs always had loads of heart and a wry, boozy point of view that gave their music a strong, individual personality, even as they relied heavily on the Rolling Stones as a keynote source, and later evolved a ragged-glory sound close to the Replacements. On their reunion album, the sound remains much the same, while the band’s collective heart sounds pretty well broken as the four thirtysomething rockers look back on the wreckage of their failed bid to make it.

There is no shortage of self-pity on “Fuzzy Little Piece of the World,” as Simon, reminiscing about more hopeful early days, spouts such lines as “We were just young then, instead of has-beens.” But it’s not maudlin or depressed self-pity. Instead, the album comes across as a now-raucous, now-sentimental Irish wake for a dead rock band, in which the four guys who are supposed to be in the coffin get to enjoy the delicious privilege of popping out of the box to drain a few drams and lead the festivities of mourning. Ballad or blazer, everything here works, except for “Last Saturday,” a spoof of the weepy-melancholy school of British pop. Not that it’s bad, but the track, which could have been culled from Spinal Tap’s mythical ‘60s archive, doesn’t fit here.

The Pontiacs know their rock ‘n’ roll, and are able to quote classic sources not just to inform their style, but to enhance a song’s meaning. One example is the particularly apt Kinks quotation that makes up the bridge of “Cry.” Another is the rumbling, glowering “Liberace’s Dead,” which summons shades of the Stones’ “Midnight Rambler” to underscore the dread of that most deadly stalker, AIDS.

By returning with a cohesive album of first-rate rock songs about what it’s like to lose, the Pontiacs remind us that there’s no shame in losing on your own terms, with dignity and heart. In fact, by meeting or exceeding the high standards of their earlier work, they have achieved a rare victory. Never mind success; the sound of failure has seldom been so sweet.

*** Slapbak “Fast Food Funkateers”

Reprise

You’d think that a tidy, archetypal suburb such as Mission Viejo would have about as much chance of exporting satisfying funk music as Moscow or Manitoba. But Slapbak’s debut album proves that it’s not where you’re at that matters, but who you’re with.

Leader Jara Harris clearly has been spending a good deal of time with the collected works of funk’s finest. The influence of Sly and the Family Stone, Parliament-Funkadelic and Prince is as thick on “Fast Food Funkateers” as grease on a griddle. Slapbak doesn’t reach beyond its sources to expand the funk envelope, but it works skillfully, inventively and exuberantly within a classic tradition. By the end of this sprawling, consistently entertaining album, Harris and band literally are hanging with their heroes, as George Clinton, Bootsy Collins, and others from the P-Funk family turn up to help Slapbak heat up the festivities on the rambunctious party tune, “Kickin’ the Do.”

Harris writes or co-writes all of the songs, takes most of the lead vocals in a voice that’s flexible and tuneful, if not up to R & B bel canto standards, and plays a music-store’s worth of guitars, basses, drums and keyboards. He gets essential help from his sisters, Julie and Janine, and from the rest of the band, in pulling off craftily done ensemble vocal arrangements. A bit of rapping and a touch of modern technology season Slapbak’s music, but there’s no accusing it of trying to hop on hip trends. This is definitely funk from the old school.

Particularly impressive is Slapbak’s sense of song construction. The band not only has a masterful way with melodic hooks, but it knows how to make a song flow with a succession of ideas to maintain a sense of variety and surprise. In “Cold-Blooded Slapbak,” for example, we start with heated, slamming funk, take a sharp turn into metallic guitar rock and, in the midst of that lava flow, find a coolly, seductive piano current that carries us on to the song’s next phase. “Love Story” is a model of powerful dynamics tempered by restraint, as the band, with Prince’s pop-rock-soul amalgam in mind, builds from soft dreaming to a stately, melancholy anthem.

Romantic conflict is Slapbak’s primary lyrical concern, as Harris ranges from spite to seductiveness to wistful pining, never attaining the bliss he seeks. It’s a tad abrupt, then, when he suddenly finds a social conscience on “Singles,” the album’s last song. But if it’s not an easy fit, “Singles” is a welcome addendum--an unabashed tribute to the Sly Stone of “Family Affair” that emulates the warmth, intimacy and aching prettiness of that noble model.

If “Fast Food Funkateers” doesn’t offer a fresh recipe, it at least showcases a band that can work tasty variations on concepts handed down by funk’s master chefs. George Clinton once posed the musical question: “Do fries go with that shake?” On Slapbak’s expansive menu, they certainly do. Funk lovers won’t walk away from this happy meal of an album unsatisfied.

*** Cadillac Tramps “Tombstone Radio”

Doctor Dream

The Tramps’ second album finds these reigning faves of the Orange County alternative-rock club scene making solid progress. The massive, swampy, punk-’n’-blues crunch that defined last year’s debut album, “Cadillac Tramps,” remains, but “Tombstone Radio” finds the band trying some new tricks.

There’s “Venice,” a sleazy, New Orleans-style blues-dirge that owes something to the Animals’ classic take on “House of the Rising Sun” and “Graveyard Blues,” which follows Social Distortion’s lead in bringing an unbridled punk-rock spirit and heft to twangy country music. And there’s “(Carry My Soul) to the River,” a graceful, yearning finale that recalls some of the grieving epics that were a trademark of Bad Company’s estimable precursor, Free.

What’s most striking isn’t the material itself--although most of the songs here have good, catchy, sing-along hooks to go with aggressive playing. The album’s highlight is the pure guts, honed impact and impeccable taste of what has to be one of the most dynamic young guitar tandems in rock.

Jonny Wickersham, who occupies the left channel (just as he anchors stage left during Cadillac Tramps shows), and Brian Coakley, in the right, both can take a solo to wah-wah heaven or drop back to play juicy, authoritative, consistently interesting rhythm parts. It’s a measure of their confidence that they launch the album with a reworking of the Clash’s “Should I Stay or Should I Go” riff--setting the tone for a guitar-lover’s festival that slams with tremendous mass, but also slices with deft precision. There are no Eddie Van Halen exploits of technical derring-do--just a palpable hunger and fire coursing through everything they play. On “Killin’ Floor,” the Howlin’ Wolf blues chestnut, Wickersham and Coakley achieve a nasty swagger that recalls the heat, if not the lightning flash, of Jeff Beck’s blues explorations on “Truth” and “Beck-Ola.”

Vocally, the Tramps operate with some limitations. Singer Mike (Gabby) Gaborno’s strength is the humorous, sardonic personality he brings to a tall tales such as “Hoodoo Guru” and the skid-row narrative of “Cadillac Hearse.” But, in purely tonal terms, Gabby’s growl isn’t as meaty as some, and it’s less rangy than many.

Like a football team with a smart game plan, the Tramps try to make up in savvy what they lack in raw talent. Most of the songs are crafted to allow Wickersham, Coakley and an occasional female backup singer to back up Gabby with harmonies that work well to fill out the vocal sound. But when Gabby lacks backup help and a comic outlet, as he does on the plaintive, Lowell George-style ballad, “Confidence,” his limitations are obvious. Coakley, meanwhile, sounds strong and expressive while sharing the lead vocal on “(Carry My Soul) to the River.” A division of labor, with Coakley singing ballads and Gabby doing his rabble-rousing on the rockers, might be the way to go as the Tramps evolve from the speedball pitchers they were to the more diversified band that this album signals they could become.

(Cadillac Tramps play Dec. 26 at Rhythm Cafe in Santa Ana.)

**1/2

Primitive Painters “Dirtclods”

G.T.’s Records Guitar mastery is a highlight of the Primitive Painters’ debut album, as band member Jim Ustick and band associate Don Wood combine to weave a textured, many-layered tapestry. There’s nothing Primitive Painters do that U2’s the Edge, R.E.M.’s Peter Buck and Johnny Marr of the Smiths haven’t already done many times over. But track after track combines these familiar alternative-rock strands in a satisfying architecture. “Wonderful,” for example, finds a throaty, gurgling, effects-laden guitar line coursing above a rhythm part that delicately glistens. The pleasures of subtle sonic contrasts, and that firm grasp on structure and design, is always present on this well-played, well-wrought album.

The album also has a coherent, if familiar, thematic design--a series of oblique emotional sketches portraying the turmoil and doubt that accompany the journey through adolescence and post-adolescence.

On the best song, “Ships,” singer Dennis Crupi takes a poignant look back at the childhood that’s fast slipping away from him. Elsewhere, he struggles with the alienation, isolation and disaffection that seep in when we get old enough to realize that the adult world we have to face is a good deal less welcoming and accommodating than the innocent, childhood world we’ve come from. The album moves from the disgusted, indicting attitude of a Holden Caulfield to more plaintive and commiserating tones. A muted sense of affirmation and hopefulness emerges on “Take,” even as Crupi looks at the life ahead of him and wonders, “Is it me, or does it seem like there should be more?”

The album’s chief flaw--a serious, but not fatal one--is Crupi’s delivery, which tends toward exaggeration and melodrama. Drawing on the same source bands as the guitarists (Bono, Michael Stipe, Morrissey), Crupi has a basically tuneful and pleasant voice. But he’s far too prone to overplay feelings with belabored, breathy heaving a la Bono and vocal tremors that verge on unseemly blubbering. The singer needs to tone down the overacted theatrics and master the sense of restraint and proportion that already guides his instrument-wielding mates.

Primitive Painters, P.O. Box 6164, Garden Grove, Calif. 92645.

(Primitive Painters play tonight at 9 at Club UCI, on the third floor of the UC Irvine student center, Bridge Road and Pereira Drive. $2 to $5. (714) 725-2413.) *** Agent Orange

“The Electric Storm” (7-inch single)

Virtually Indestructible Music

This 45 r.p.m. release (on orange vinyl, of course) marks the first appearance of new, original material from Agent Orange since the 1986 album “This Is the Voice” (“Real Live Sound,” a live album of previously released songs, appeared last year). Main man Mike Palm is one of the most talented figures to have come out of the Orange County punk rock boom more than a decade ago, but he has been by far the least prolific.

“The Electric Storm” comes advertised as a teaser for a forthcoming album, and it’s enough to whet the appetite for more. This is dark, high-drama rock ‘n’ roll--an Agent Orange trademark. Palm’s guitar generates a swarming torrent that intensifies as the song goes on; meanwhile, he sings about facing life’s storm with determination, so that he might harness the fierce elements raging around him. On the B-side, “Skinny Dip,” Palm indulges his love of instrumental surf-rock, another form that celebrates the drama inherent in head-on engagement with a force of nature.

Agent Orange, P.O. Box 16385, Encino, Calif. 91416.