*** Steve Westfield and the Burnouts

BRAINWRECK

(BIB)

Former Pajama Slave Dancer Steve Westfield could be western Massachusetts's surrogate Neil Young. He's got a piercing, pinched, nasal-toned singing voice and populist, meat-and-potatoes lyrics; and like Neil, he's often credited with being an inspiration for Dinosaur's Jr's J Mascis and Lou Barlow. Westfield can turn deceptively simple roots-grounded hard rock into something vaguely profound and (more often than not) profoundly, painfully funny.

Forsaking the stark, suicidal, pedal-steel-draped melancholia of 1995's Reject Me First, Brainwreck is a return to the loose, playful lo-fi of his 1994 solo debut, Mangled (which featured cameos by Barlow, Buffalo Tom's Chris Colbourn, and the Pixies' Joey Santiago). This one's on the spastic-bizarre side, and mainly an excuse to rock out with guitarist Rich Gilbert. A goofy exuberance pervades the title track, "Smoked a Little Too Much Monkey Brains Last Night," and a story about a guy waking up to find he's been maimed by a record player. But it's worth it just to hear Westfield take comfort in the knowledge that when nuclear Armageddon comes, his records are alphabetically assured of eternal rest in good company, "way in the back, with all the stuff you never heard . . . I'll be lying in some burned-out World of Music, bent and melted next to Paul Westerberg."

-- Carly Carioli

(Steve Westfield and the Slow Band with Rich Gilbert play this Friday, January 17, at Bill's Bar.)