There aren't a lot of guys in (or , period) who appear to have their feet more squarely on the ground than , who in his own regular-guy way has been the heart, soul and conscience of the music ever since his days playing bass in . A musical team player who lives by the notion of "jamming econo" (living and touring frugally, with an eye on the music rather than the trappings), is as likely to talk about fixing his van or recording on used tape in his interviews as he is about "stardom" or "career," so when he had a regular guy's sort of life-changing experience -- a close brush with death brought on by a massive abscess in his perineum that eventually burst -- it makes sense that he would chose to write a song cycle about it. is a " of sorts in which presents a first-person account of his illness and recovery (names of the participants included) which occasionally betrays the influence of 's , with sickness representing the Inferno, treatment standing in for Purgatory, and the return to health as the ascent to Paradise. If this all sounds a bit grand, it doesn't play that way; 's craggy voice (sounding like a deeper, West Coast variation on ' vocal style) keeps this material firmly grounded at all times, as do the messy realities of tunes like and and the everyday joy of recorded these songs with on organ, on drums, and himself on "thudstaff" (that's bass guitar in Pedro-speak), and while the arrangements are typically efficient, and his crew are able to conjure up a genuinely epochal sound out of this power trio, with 's organ offering a broad range of tonal colors and 's thick bass tone sometimes doubling as a fuzzed-out guitar. is a wildly idiosyncratic examination of life, death, and the bridge in between, with its sense of joy in the possibilities of second chances outweighing its very real terrors, and no one but could have made it -- it's harrowing, funny, and genuinely moving stuff from a true American original. ~ Mark Deming