*** Firewater

GET OFF THE CROSS (WE NEED THE WOOD FOR THE FIRE)

(Jetset)

NYC's Cop Shoot Cop were always at their best when they tempered their post-punk industrialized agitpop with some ironic jazzy swing or, on 1993's Ask Questions Later (Interscope), with the little-big-band arrangements of their downtown buddy David Ouimet. With Cop Shoot Cop on hold, frontdude/bassist Tod Ashley pushes further in that direction with Firewater, a semi-supergroup featuring Jesus Lizard guitarist Duane Denison and Soul Coughing drummer Yuval Gabay, as well as Ouimet on piano and organ.

Gone is the caustic distortion and sample interference of CSC. Firewater rely instead on clean, crisp, mostly organic arrangements that draw heavily from old-country Eastern European folk musics -- klezmer, polkas, and Gypsy jigs. Violinist Han Rowe and multi-instrumentalist Kurt Hoffman (saxophone, clarinet, and accordion) add some amusing authentic accents, and Denison's guitar playing is devastatingly sharp. But the crowning touch is Ashley, who presides over the demented cabaret with a deliciously roguish rasp, conjuring perverse images of a debauched Topol. In view of the disc's title, the only real disappointment is that Ashley never breaks into a chorus of "Matchmaker, matchmaker, give me a match. . . . "

-- Matt Ashare

(Firewater open for Soul Coughing at Avalon this Saturday, March 8.)