For a band that’s considered a side-project by most of its members, the Minus 5 has endured longer than one would expect. For their seventh release, ringleader and Young Fresh Fellow Scott McCaughey has once again assembled a menagerie of regular collaborators (R.E.M.’s Peter Buck, the boys from Wilco, John Wesley Harding) and a few newbies (Colin Meloy, Kelly Hogan and, most bizarrely and awesomely, Morgan Fisher of Mott the Hoople). While some past tracks have sounded like Wilco castoffs, the new songs mostly defy the axiom that side-albums are where inferior material goes to die. Tracks like ‘With a Gun’ and ‘Twilight Distillery’, in which Buck in particular makes his presence felt, are top-notch in their own right. Of course, with so many cooks in the kitchen, none of these songs have what you could call a distinctive “Minus 5 sound,” and lowlights like ‘Aw Shit Man’ and the anemic ‘Cigarettes, Coffee and Booze’ lower the common denominator. There’s nothing revolutionary about the record, but when a group is enjoying themselves this much, you can’t help but want to join them.
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