Stalwart Philly-area power-popsters THE DONUTS showed us just how good they could be with their previous album, 2005's 'The Monkey Wrench Gang' and - proffering 13 dynamite tunes in a breezy 31 minutes - its' erstwhile follow-up is once again long on sussed songwriting and allied with brevity-respecting tunesmithery.
Produced with the help of longstanding cohorts including pedal steel master Jose Mignorance and desk man extraordinaire Mike 'Slo-Mo' Brenner, 'Jet Ear' may not possess anything quite as full-on and aggressive as 'Monkey Wrench...' highlights like 'Soon' and its' robust title track, but it's once again a fine vehicle for frontman J.Bearclaw's well-observed, Anglophile-leaning songs and pretty much instantly etches a clutch of future-classic pop nuggets into our collective psyche.
Sonically, the main advance is that the core Donuts quartet have welcomed keyboard maestro Dieter Affeschlusselgruppe into the fold. Yes, I doubt you'd be able to manage that surname after a curry and ten pints of snakebite either and besides - bearing in mind the established Donuts have names like Fathead and Peter Extravazanga - its' quite possible this tongue-twister may be a nom de plume. There's nothing dummy-selling about Dieter's prowess at the ivories, however, and he makes his presence felt all over the shop, adding everything from expansive piano to the soulful glide of 'Let Me Walk You Home' through to seriously fruity organ all over the shop ('Devil Moon' and many more) and even rescues the otherwise pedestrian 'Hanging On' with a cool, Dave Greenfield-style solo.
The other new dimension is the burgeoning political leaning inherent in Bearclaw's lyrics. Admittedly, this is always from a humanitarian-first point of view, but it adds a great urgency and throws a finely-spun veil of protest over songs like the album's two Iraq-commentary set pieces, 'Justice In The Desert' and the excellent 'Guantanamo'. The former marries a quintessential skinny-tie, new wave backdrop to horrific post-conflict images ("one dead Charlie and a busted Humvee turns a soldier into a vigilante/ but the NCIS ain't gonna make him pay"), while the strident, self-explanatory 'Guantanamo' ("you're here to spill the beans upon our table/ we'll torture you until you're able") pits a miltant beat against incendiary guitars, Dieter's fairground organ and stabs of Mariachi-style brass and ends up sounding like perhaps their best song yet, even if the super-conservative MTV doyens won't wanna hear lyrics like that.
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Closer to home, the gently moving acoustic lament of 'Man On The Roof' opens the album on a surprise downbeat note, though its' all-too-tangible tale of a man whose life's been ripped apart by freak floods and devastation ("if there's a God looking down from his preserve/ wonder whether he'd think that they got what they deserved?") seems especially valid in these days of radical climate change. Elsewhere, The 'Nuts occupy more typical personal home turf on tunes like the streamlined 'Already Over' and 'Johnny Don't Talk': both beautifully-observed tales of domestic disharmony where Bearclaw takes a Costello-ish cleaver ("she married into misery, married into doom/ she thought she'd got a bargain/ instead she's got a tomb") to the hopes of women who think they can change their men.
Yes, there are occasional weak links in the chain like the rather lumpen, one-dimensional riff-heavy likes of 'Hanging On' and 'Ithaca Car Ride', but these low-watt efforts are more than re-ignited by the groove-bound 'Havoc', the 'Subterranean Homesick Blues-style delivery of 'Devil Moon' ( which brilliantly rhymes "politics" with "verbal tics") and the sheer kooked-out oddness of 'Bethlehem'. They sensibly leave the excellent, mutant bossa-nova of 'Realms of Barbelo' in reserve for the curtain call, too, and while I haven't got a soddin' clue what the title means, the song's naggingly melodic groove soon comes on like an old friend you'll be delighted to greet time and time again.
The curiously-titled 'Jet Ear', then, is another consistently fine album which crams melodic goodness into each of its' nutritious, bite-size courses. It serves further notice that The Donuts are mutating from a guilty snack to a full-blown, addictive blow-out and If they keep this up, reserving a table in advance will become compulsory.
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