Hayes Carll turns on charm

Hayes Carll

“Trouble in Mind”

(Lost Highway)

* * *1/2 It’s hard to decide right away which is more impressive, this 28-year-old Texan’s delightfully crafted tales of life in the bars and side roads of rural America or the vibrant music he couches them in, a rootsy, country-based stew thick with roadhouse blues.

So why choose? Carll, who plays May 3 at the Stagecoach country festival in Indio, follows in the mighty footsteps of such Lone Star State country-folk-rock luminaries as Townes Van Zandt, Guy Clark and Joe Ely. There’s a bit of Steve Earle folksy philosopher lurking there too, but Carll’s voice, as a writer and a singer, is as uncommonly distinctive as it is assured.

The drawl notwithstanding, this is no simple-minded party-hearty Southern country rocker. This honky-tonk troubadour tosses off witty couplets with disarming ease: “Well, I’m wild as a turkey, higher than a Christmas moon / Empty as my wallet on a Sunday afternoon,” he sings in “Wild as a Turkey.” Describing the dive he plays six nights a week in “I Got a Gig,” he observes, “Burnt fried chicken and Lone Star beer / Cops and the kids drink free ‘round here.”

Dylan clearly is an influence too, perhaps a tad too clearly in the “Rainy Day Women #12 and 35”-inspired “A Lover Like You.” But even when Carll’s sources are showing, it’s too much sloppy fun to grouse about for long. And “She Left Me for Jesus” is a brilliant example of how to simultaneously salute and parody a time-honored musical genre.

Whatever they’ve got in the water down there is golden. Or maybe it’s just the beer.

-- Randy Lewis

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Finding their place in Brit rock

The Kooks

“Konk”

(Astralwerks)

* * *1/2 When you name your band after a David Bowie song and your album after the Kinks’ recording studio, you’re proudly flying the flag of classic British rock, but you’re also painting a fat target on your chest. If you don’t make a respectable run at those standards, you’ll end up looking a little silly. So give this quartet from Brighton credit for brashness and even more for making good on the challenge in its second album, out today.

The Kooks aim to take their place in the Brit rock tradition, not monkey with it a lot. They believe that tangy, tuneful songs built on guitars, bass and drums, “ooo-oooh” and “sha la la” harmonies and syncopated hand-claps is still all you need to express the bittersweet brew of youthful emotion.

This vote for constants and continuity signals a choice to remain sealed from the ferment that’s reshaping pop at street level these days, but for those who speak this language, “Konk” should elevate the Kooks near the level of Franz Ferdinand among the current practitioners. They’re not quite as hooky and dynamic, but they’re effortlessly buoyant and heartfelt, and “Do You Wanna” stomps along with an infectious force that evokes “Take Me Out.”

Elsewhere they range from wistful to anthemic, with singer Luke Pritchard serving as an engaging companion through a landscape of possibility and discontent. His strength is the believability and intimacy of his natural, nasal voice.

-- Richard Cromelin

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Within BJM’s signature moods

The Brian Jonestown Massacre

“My Bloody Underground”

(a recordings)

* * * Since the Brian Jonestown Massacre’s start in San Francisco in 1995, more than two dozen members have come and gone, with main man Anton Newcombe’s arcane psychedelic/psychotic reaction to ‘60s rock a la Stones, Velvets and Dylan remaining the band’s defining feature.

BJM’s 13th release and first in four years, out today, was written and recorded in Liverpool, England, and Reykjavik, Iceland. It’s a curious grab-bag of Newcombe’s multifarious moods and oddly juxtaposed genre meltdowns.

“Bring Me the Head of Paul McCartney on Heather Mill’s Wooden Peg (Dropping Bombs on the White House)” or “Infinite Wisdom Tooth / My Last Night in Bed With You” bring variations on plodding thump-rock laced with strummy, swirling acoustic guitars and Newcombe’s muffled vocal shards.

“Just Like Kicking Jesus” is a benignly messy haze of buzzing electric axes and lopsided rhythm loops, with Newcombe’s from-the-heart yelps and cries buried in the mix. The heady claustrophobia is interpolated with sonically richer instrumentals, concluding with the doomy electronic sludge of “Black Hole Symphony.”

Frustrating in their obdurate murkiness of sound and intent, the woolly miasmas of “My Bloody Underground” nevertheless reveal a rare, uncompromising sound and vision as if channeled directly from the depths of a musician’s murky psyche. Newcombe has nothing to say, and he’s saying it.

-- John Payne

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Albums are rated on a scale of one star (poor), two stars (fair), three stars (good) and four stars (excellent). The albums are already released unless otherwise noted.