Camper Van Beethoven

Just as hardcore has become no more than a fashion statement, just when a stylized sneer
has become about as menacing as a smile, they've come up with a new way to be
confrontational. The members of Camper Van Beethoven-fresh out of the lethargy of
laid-back Santa Cruz, California-do it by being their usual oddball selves. The band's third
album has no title, possibly because, in the spirit of warped reality, CVB conside... More >

Without benefit of a "Skinheads" or a "Bad Trip," this is the most convincing of the three very good albums they've dashed off in a year and a half--sixteen tracks, eclectic in a panfolkrock mode that now seems unselfconscious if not inevitable, even the instrumentals equipped with words of one sort of another sometimes. Their stance is bemused when it's not just spaced out, and their "Interstellar Overdrive" is too conceptual for my tastes. But I reserve the right to read good politics into the likes of "Joe Stalin's Cadillac" (is LBJ's Cadillac is Somoza's Cadillac is General Pinochet's Cadillac is my Cadillac I'd like to drive it off a bridge has anyone seen the bridge). So far their productivity seems proof against the desperate indulgences that can overcome talented bands with dodgy commercial prospects. They're an encouraging aberration in a bad time. I wish them a tour bus w/driver that never lets them down. (Grade: A)