‘The Bough Breaks,’ and Bill Ward Rises

Bill Ward is one of the brightest rock talents ever to lay fallow until middle age.

Ward was, in fact, a major rock star during his youth, while he put in 15 years as the original drummer of Black Sabbath. But the transplanted Englishman, a Seal Beach resident who has lived in Orange County since the early ‘80s, was respected--or, in anti-metal circles, ridiculed--only for his tromping drumbeats. Ward sang lead vocals on just two tracks during his Sabbath years; singer Ozzy Osbourne and guitarist Tony Iommi are the members who come to mind first when fans talk about what made Sabbath the dark, heavy force it was.

After shaking a near-fatal drinking problem in his mid-30s, Ward emerged in 1990 with a striking solo debut, “Ward One: Along the Way.” Aided by such guest luminaries as Osbourne and Jack Bruce, he sang about his decline and rebirth.

The long-aborning “When the Bough Breaks” signals a leap in confidence and ambition for Ward, now 49. Its adventurous sonic reach and stylistic omniverousness hark back to the early ‘70s--but not to the heavy metal early ‘70s of Black Sabbath--when albums such as David Bowie’s “Hunky Dory,” the Who’s “Who’s Next” and “Quadrophenia,” John Lennon’s “Imagine,” Lou Reed’s “Berlin,” Derek & the Dominos’ “Layla,” the Rolling Stones’ “Sticky Fingers” and the Move’s “Message From the Country” capped the discoveries of the ‘60s.

While anchored by rock’s physical heft and momentum, these records dared to stretch for any style, feeling or sonic dimension the artists might deem worth trying. The same spirit fills “When the Bough Breaks,” whose only serious flaw is the near-microscopic type used in the CD booklet.

More than on his debut, Ward reveals a blessed ear for melody and a gift for arranging and structuring songs. He blesses his audience’s ears with varied instrumentation and an unerring knack for shifting densities and willingly lets his excellent three-man band--drummer Ronnie Ciago, guitarist Keith Lynch and bassist Paul Ill--blaze through a verse, float cloud-like on a bridge or soar grandly on a chorus.

Ward doesn’t rule out any possibility, so there is the sardonic rock ‘n’ roll saxophone of “Hate,” the bowed cello and gently sobbing string section of “Children Killing Children,” the wafting, warmly lyrical Hendrix/Clapton-inspired guitar on “Nighthawks, Stars and Pines.” There is also the ELO-ish stateliness of “Try Life,” the soul-tinged female backing voices well-deployed to provoke or soothe, the country-blues Dobro that sets off the hectic rock onslaught of “Please Help Mommy (She’s a Junkie)” and the tribal rhythms of “Step Lightly” and “Love and Innocence.”

It’s no mere game-playing; the gear-shifting serves Ward’s most persistent theme: capturing the awful but potentially magical moment when life tumbles toward darkness, yet the falling soul still has a chance to reach for the light. In Ward’s hopeful vision, there is always a chance to climb out of black holes on a rope woven from love, faith and the knowledge of what a gift it is to be alive. Ward charts these moments in a voice that can recall Jack Bruce or Roger Daltrey, albeit without quite the vividness and arresting impact of these all-time greats.

Ward’s method is perhaps best exemplified by “Shine,” which unfolds in taut, sardonic verses set to biting, ultra-heavy blues-rock.

I might not get well, I might not get help,

I’m only human, after all.

Oh, what a poor excuse, but one I can always use,

When I can’t imagine growth at all.

But Ward never loses sight of the possibility that lies in being “only human,” and a softening sympathy attends the irony with which he etches the misery of his troubled characters. In a soaring, orchestral-rock chorus, he elevates the refrain of “Shine” from the platitude it seems in print into a beautiful, inspiring truth: “Find love and shine.”

Find “When the Bough Breaks,” and you’ll hear rock that shines with the light of a long-ago golden age, now retrieved.

* Bill Ward plays Wednesdayat the Whisky A Go-Go, 8901 Sunset Blvd., West Hollywood. Midnight, following three opening bands starting at 9. $15. (714) 740-2000 (Ticketmaster) or (310) 652-4202 (club). Ward also plays June 29 at the Galaxy Concert Theatre, 3503 S. Harbor Blvd., Santa Ana. 8 p.m. $10. (714) 957-0600.

Big Sound and Big Heart

*** FLUF “Waikiki” MCA / Way Cool

Here’s another Fluf album, and it’s sort of like the previous three. But if that means the band is in a rut, hand ‘em a shovel so they can keep digging.

Led by singer-guitarist O (for Otis Barthoulameu), the San Diego-based trio, which has deep roots in the Orange County alterna-rock scene, offers a winning combination of a big sound and a big heart.

In his own gruff way, O may be the most openhearted guy in all of modern rock. His main subject, as always, is the close-in examination of relationships--romantic or comradely--in which the ties that bind are often unwinding.

O has a beef Wellington of a voice, crusty yet inwardly tender. Even when delivering an indictment as direct as the one in “Sweet Dough”--”You don’t love me, you love my dough/And now I’m lost, nowhere to go”--O’s singing manages to conjure the lovin’ feelin’ that’s been lost, which makes his hurt all the more vivid.

A seemingly obvious broadside such as “TV Anthem” (“We own what you think/And we don’t even care/With your mind on the blink/You just sit and stare”) gains dimension as O, his voice muttering resignedly, includes himself among the hopelessly addicted: “Turn it off now/I can do that/I don’t know what I’m saying.”

In “Pipe Bomb,” O curses friends who have succumbed to drug addiction, including Sublime’s Brad Nowell, and even suggests that their accomplishments may be washed away by their sordid endings: “All those things you said to me, they go right down the drain, just like the rain.”

The album’s bravest and most on-target song, “Of the Bo,” laments the casual homophobia that is ingrained in the alt-rock scene, as it is in society at large: “ ‘Faggot’ is just a word/It’s way too over-heard.” O knows what he’s up against, though, and ends the song’s chorus with a chastened sense that, for all his calling for change, “It’s all the same.”

O’s good lyrical and melodic ideas are the software stored on the band’s monumental hard-drive, which unleashes an unusually well-conceived take on grungy garage-pop. Drummer Miles Gillett is a master at sounding as if he is taking an unthinking, bash-’cause-it-feels-good approach, which gives the band the advantages of rough, unpremeditated rocking. Yet he steers songs deftly through shifting dynamics and structural turns.

(Gillett is one of the really good ones, so it’s unfortunate for Fluf that he has gotten homesick again; a show Friday at the Huntington Beach Central Library will be his last before he returns to his native New Zealand. Gillett spent the ‘80s on the O.C. rock scene with El Grupo Sexo and Gherkin Raucous, went home to New Zealand, then returned when O summoned him to launch Fluf in 1992. Fluf will continue, with O the remaining original member.)

O’s crisp, chordal lead breaks and tonal variations add flavor, and he’s capable of resorting to a thrumming, liquid guitar riff out of the Cure or New Order handbook as well as more typical post-grunge distortion. Under the cover of its roughhouse density, Fluf sneaks in such crafty grace notes as doubled vocal lines and multi-tracked guitar flavorings. This hidden subtlety sets Fluf apart from its more one-dimensional modern-rock colleagues.

* Fluf, Action League and One-hundred Words for Snow play Friday at the Huntington Beach Central Library, 7111 Talbert Ave. 9 p.m. $5. (714) 224-9924.

Ratings range from * (poor) to **** (excellent), with three stars denoting a solid recommendation.