Joined by Fastbacks guitarist Kurt Bloch, King Crimson drummer Bill Rieflin and multi-instrumentalist Scott McCaughey of the Minus 5, Sleater-Kinney’s Corin Tucker and R.E.M. guitarist Peter Buck have recorded as Filthy Friends—imagine a shaggier, angrier Traveling Wilburys with several decades’ worth of gnarled rock and punk roots among them. Their debut album sounds good. The playing is crisp. Nevertheless, like some latter-day R.E.M. albums after the departure of Bill Berry in 1997, Invitation depends on its lack of surprise. In its clean, straightforward grooves, the album betrays no cynicism or enervation. It is a good time, and not much more.
The exceptions are pungent and allusive enough to wonder what the hell it takes to chart on what’s left of rock radio. “The Arrival” isn’t the first song but should be: a serpentine riff kicked around, with Tucker’s habit of pricking syllables for blood. “Got something to prove, got something to say,” she sings as if she needed convincing. She and the guys aren’t defensive, though. A jangle variant on that riff provides the backdrop for more Tucker testifyin’. There’s even a bass solo.
”Come Back Shelley,” Filthy Friends’ take on T. Rex’s “Bang a Gong” is even better: an ode to a slinky little woman with a “new wave” haircut who loves wearing her boyfriend’s clothes. With crucial help from McCaughey’s boogie-woogie piano, Tucker delivers her most lascivious vocal since Sleater-Kinney’s “Milkshake and Honey”; she knew a Shelley and wanted a Shelley, or she was Shelley, giving her admirers one more chance to figure her out.
A similar calling-all-stations approach, however, lets down the single “Despierta.” A callback to Sleater-Kinney’s Dubya-era One Beat, “Despierta” has it both ways: an expression of disbelief laced with terror inspired by what our fellow citizens had wrought on November 2016 that sounds neither terrifying nor unbelievable. It offers platitudes that dissolve in the air and it’s about as vital as a protest sign left on a lawn. If “The Arrival” represents a thrilling showcase for Tucker, “Any Kind of Crowd” ventures too comfortably into the winsome for my taste, despite the efforts of the guys’ enthusiastic background vocals—imagine Tucker singing R.E.M.’s “Sitting Still” off a karaoke monitor.
The tour for this record will be a trip, and I hope Tucker, restrained and almost decorous throughout, blasts audiences to cinders with her voice. Similarly, I have faith that Filthy Friends, having made a good album, return to the studio to make a wonderful one. Appreciate the snap of Rieflin’s drumming. Savor the interplay between Bloch and Buck. They’ll be back.
