“AARP Go The Weasels”

In 1995, I started working as a music critic for Albany, New York’s alternative newsweekly, Metroland. I would stop by the office once a week a pick up a pile of records (some still vinyl, some cassettes and some CDs at that point), a few of which would have elaborate press kits accompanying them, but most of which would just be sitting there, unexplained. In those barbaric pre-Google days, there was no easy way to find out much about the lower-profile artists who sent the fruits of their labor my way, so I’d end up listening to and reviewing many of their records in the dark, with no preconceived notions based on what I’d read before I spun the music.

At the end of my first year with Metroland, I was asked to pick my ten favorite albums of 1995, and most of them were by artists with whom I’d been familiar when that fortuitous year had commenced. One notable exception, though: an incredible record called Leon’s Mystical Head by The Weasels. One of my fellow Metroland critics had reviewed the album earlier in the year, and her article had made me pull it from the big pile of mysterious, unexplained discs I’d accumulated, and it blew my mind: it featured extraordinarily well-written — yet often horrifically disturbing and politically incorrect — lyrics atop catchy and melodic jazz/blues based musical beds, delivered by an ace band.

Best of all, I learned from my colleague’s 1995 review that The Weasels were a national-caliber band of homegrown pedigree . . . I had no idea who they were, but it was nice to know that they were Albany neighbors, and they thus became the first locally-bred Albany band that made me actively contemplate the fact that world class music was emerging from what was then (to me) a largely undiscovered market, beyond early MTV favorites Blotto.

As it turned out, that geographic proximity resulted in me later doing freelance work with several members of the Weasels in the years that followed, as well as the opportunity to see them live several times. I caught their very last concert appearance in October 2000, at which point they turned into Albany’s version of Steely Dan, offering only occasional slabs of sardonic studio work fortified by performances by the region’s very best studio players. While their live appearances dried up, their studio work just got stronger and stronger, and it was a real treat to have a local insider’s view into their creative progress, which was truly formidable.

And so, while I no longer live in Albany, it is a particular delight to report on The Weasels’ sixth studio album, AARP Go The Weasels, which was released on Valentine’s Day, 2013. I’m pleased to write about it here not as a partisan former member of Team Albany, but as a music aficionado who values great songwriting and great performances, regardless of the cities from which they hail. This is a great album, by a great band, no matter where you live.

Core Weasel players and songwriters Dr. Fun and Roy Weasell (both members in good standing of polite Albany society, hence the pseudonyms, lest their Weasel activities interfere with their other jobs) are joined on the new disc by the best rhythm section they’ve had in their long career together. Bassist Jon Cohen has been an on again/off again Weasel since their earliest days, and he is supported on the back-line on this record by the legendary Alexander Kash, whose back story includes stints in Australian pre-punk pop titans Blackfeather, among many other bands. Weasell’s rhythm guitar and mandolin work perfectly anchor the new album’s songs, while Fun sings some of his best lyrics and contributes choice keyboard and alto saxophone parts to the mix. The core quartet sit strong at the heart of these new recordings, and their tight and tough playing really anchors the proceedings, allowing the album’s guest soloists to soar: guitarists Chuck D’Aloia and Eric Finn, keyboardists Adrian Cohen and Mike Kelley and tenor sax player Brian Patneaude all offer stellar spots throughout AARP Go the Weasels’ run. The Steely Dan analogy holds, with traces of Frank Zappa tossed into the mix for good creative measure.

As great as these performances are, they’d be squandered on inferior songs, but that’s never a worry on AARP Go The Weasels, as this long disc offers some of the group’s finest creative moments. The album opens with the stellar “Father Weasel,” which updates Lewis Carroll’s classic poem “Father William” for the 21st Century: where Carroll worried about his aged protagonist’s penchant for headstands and somersaults, Fun’s Father Weasel offers his young interrogator wisdom about sexual potency among the elderly, along with tips regarding regular bowel movements and estate planning. “What Says Creep” and “Freemason Reese” update demo cuts from 2000′s Generation Xcrement album, while the closing pair of “Wailing Song” and “Doubting Thomas” stand tall among the Weasels’ most evocative depictions of the human (and post-human) experience. You could build a modern religion on the latter two songs, and it would be as compelling as many other creeds currently recruiting candidates in 21st Century America.

AARP Go the Weasels also includes the band’s politically astute 2010 single “Do The Teabag,” which offers a surf-rock synopsis of a particularly unfortunate modern right-wing American political movement, while “Zucchini Park” fairly takes a hammer and chisel to the left wing version of political populism, circa 2012. “Last Supper on Lark Street” provides a blissfully acute skewering of what passes for high cuisine experiences in many contemporary hipster dining establishments, as the mandolin-fortified “Invasion of the Body” turns an alien invasion scenario into something credibly mundane and real. There are over half a dozen other songs on this disc of equally revelatory and insightful quality, making AARP Go The Weasels a truly masterful snapshot of the political and popular memes that define our (sad and terrible) modern era. If you find yourself despairing at the world you live in today, this album provides a tremendous opportunity to skewer the unskewerable, with aplomb. You’ll be a better person for listening to it, carefully.

At bottom line, I don’t gush about this album as a former citizen of Albany, nor as a current Des Moines denizen. I praise it as an exceptional artistic statement for listeners of all stripes and from all locales, and encourage you to snap it up as essential listening from a truly great band who deserve wider acclaim than they’ve received to date. Here’s a link to the first of six planned videos from the new album, the media skewering “A Friend in Tweed.” If this isn’t the best antidote to “little man, big head” syndrome that you will see in 2013, then I can’t imagine what is.

Great music, great songs, and great social commentary . . . what more do you want from a great album in 2013? Watch for it in my “Best Music of 2013″ list come December, likely near the top spot.