Break Me: A Quick Review Of The New Album From Filthy Friends (Members Of Sleater-Kinney, R.E.M., Young Fresh Fellows)

The term super-group gets used too much. However, if there was ever a band that deserved such a label, it was Filthy Friends. Featuring Corin Tucker (Sleater-Kinney), Peter Buck (R.E.M.), Scott McCaughey (Young Fresh Fellows), Kurt Bloch (The Fastbacks), and Linda Pitmon (Steve Wynn's band), Filthy Friends make music that is deliciously grubby and full of the sort of grit that roots rock bands once routinely offered up. Decidedly insistent, the music on Emerald Valley, out on Friday via Kill Rock Stars, is sharp and bracing, and entirely unlike that of any of the bands I just mentioned above.

Lead single "November Man" sees Tucker growl over the sort of slide guitar-hook that any number of blues bands would kill for, while "Break Me" is gloriously tuneful, Tucker's voice now somewhat soothing, and Buck's riff carrying the tune forward into the summer sun. It's a bright bit of AOR business that succeeds because it sounds so unlike lots of what any of these players have done in their other groups. Elsewhere, "Pipeline" is a near-strut that's full of menace, while "Last Chance Country" rocks like something from X in their whole "Burning House of Love"-era. Lots of Emerald Valley has a sort of roots-y charm that suggests the sort of thing lots of fans gravitated towards in the college rock-boom of the Eighties. And with lyrical observations that address contemporary concerns, the band's tunes are also topical, a nice reminder of how Yank rockers like The Long Ryders and John Doe once made music that felt traditional even as it shot a few verbal arrows through the hull of whatever rickety old establishment ship was sailing the political waters at the moment. Only on the aching "Hey Lacey", the closer here on Emerald Valley, do things get relaxed, Tucker's vocal performance on this cut an absolute thing of beauty.

Emerald Valley is out on Friday via Kill Rock Stars.

More details on Filthy Friends via the band's official Facebook page.

[Photo: John Clark]