CD Review

Ted Stevens is a tortured soul. For one thing, the Mayday frontman can’t stop obsessing over a bygone era. While much of the Saddle Creek clan digs around in the 1980s for inspiration, Stevens borrows the Wurlitzer jukebox sounds of the 1950s, and seems to revel in that era’s ramblers, loners and self-destructive icons (think James Dean or Marilyn Monroe).

With Bushido Karaoke, the band’s third album, he and his ensemble cast (regulars Dan McCarthy, Pat Oakes and Tiffany Kowalski, as well as Azure Ray’s Orenda Fink, Now It’s Overhead’s Andy LeMaster and Cursive’s Tim Kasher, among others) chronicle the adventures of a variety of pained folks as they cope with life. Stevens’ trick is to juxtapose these stories against instantly recognizable sounds. On the record’s opener, “Pelf Help,” a doo wop piano line lends the feel of a 1950s prom slow dance, while he croons about a fallen beauty. The aptly named “Rock and Roll Can’t Save Your Life” finds Stevens shifting to a gentle murmur, but remaining equally pained.

Bushido Karaoke is unsettling and uncomfortable at times—the record’s closer, “Song of the Scaffold,” finds Stevens reattaching his own head after a decapitation—but it does perfectly capture the existential angst that hovers over classic American rock ‘n’ roll. Were oldies radio not so relentlessly intent on making sure its listeners had “good times” and “fun,” Mayday might fit nicely into their playlists.