E-Mail This Article to a Friend Bred in the bone Jake Brennan finds his roots with the Confidence Men BY TED DROZDOWSKI

Songwriter Jake Brennan calls his band Jake Brennan & the Confidence Men. But Jake wouldn’t lie to you. At least, not in one of his songs. Maybe not at all. He writes spare lyrics that ring true, lyrics set to riffs that resonate like classics, numbers that blast out of both rock’s past and its future — and straight out of his heart. So there’s no room for irony or falsehood. Right, Jake?

"I’d like to write campy songs," Brennan allows, "because I love that stuff, but it just doesn’t sound right. Beck — the last album he did was great, and it wasn’t ironic. Mark Sandman, from Morphine, never relied on irony. I admire him for the way he did things. Irony is maybe something that someone who is insecure in his artistry might hide behind. Ultimately, I can’t hide behind irony or be cute. I’ve tried, and I can’t do it." The irony of this is that it makes the name of Brennan’s band ironic. But if Jake Brennan & the Confidence Men couldn’t con you even if they tried, what they can do is put the cool breeze of great rock and roll in your hair again.

Their debut album, Love and Bombs (Yep Roc), is a blow-up: great tunes with a wide emotional scope and a musical sensibility that embraces the grit of primal rock, the power of soul, and the spare heart-tugging sounds of ’50s and ’60s country music. Imagine Mississippi Fred McDowell and George Jones — both name-checked on the disc — and the Ramones and Chuck Berry all sharing elbow room at the same bar. Love and Bombs is hands-down one of the best albums by a Boston-area artist this year, right alongside Aerosmith’s Honkin’ on Bobo (Columbia) and guitarist Glenn Jones’s This Is the Wind That Blows It Out (Strange Attractors).

The disc, which Brennan and crew will celebrate with a CD-release show this Friday at the Middle East, starts tough. "Shake ’Em On Down" is a brief blast of choppy guitars and barely tempered howling that sets up a visit to Brennan’s world of dreamers and schemers. A song later, "If It Takes All Night," we’re meeting them as they hook up and start working their angles. "As a musician, I spend a lot of time in bars, so a lot of my subject matter comes from watching how people interact and the way they choose to treat the people they love or are about to love," Brennan notes.

But "Believe Me" comes straight from the heart. It was the title track of Brennan & the Confidence Men’s 2003 EP, and here it’s a transitional tune that enlarges the album’s emotional scope with its open declaration of love and an instantly memorable chorus. The lyrics capture a couple on the verge of a possible break-up; it’s unabashedly sweet and made sweeter by mandolin virtuoso Jimmy Ryan’s enticing riff and ringing guitar under the chorus.

Before radio play was a bought-and-sold commodity, a tune like "Believe Me" might be a hit. It still might, with luck. Winning the most recent Rumble and getting three Boston Music Award nominations (for Local Male Singer, Live Act, and Band) has drawn the local industry’s attention to Brennan and his wiry crew. His solo tours opening for Tommy Stinson and Evan Dando have made inroads elsewhere. "This album is pretty much what we’re gonna live or die by. We’re planning to tour behind it as much as we can and play as hard as we can. And if that doesn’t do it, we’re screwed."

Brennan’s joking, more or less. "Two of a Kind" (a duet with his girlfriend, singer-songwriter Sarah Borges), the autobiographical coming-of-ager "In My Stepdad’s Truck," and the closing piano ballad, "Good Night," show him to be an artist of depth and range. Performers with those qualities rarely live or die by one album. Plus, there’s his stage presence. Brennan balks at being called a natural, perhaps because his father is the respected locally based singer-songwriter Dennis Brennan, who becomes a shaking rock-and-roll animal the second his band hit a chord on stage. Jake has similar instincts. The youthful-looking 30-year-old and his accomplices — drummer Rob Dulaney, bassist Binky, keyboardist Scott Janovitz (brother of Buffalo Tom frontman Bill Janovitz), and fellow guitarist Eric Barlow — snap with vigor, energy, and sweat from note one. Their concerts fire up faith in what producer Paul Q. Kolderie calls "big American rock."

Kolderie, whose résumé includes influential albums by the Pixies, Hole, and Radiohead, was playing a 2001 Treat Her Right reunion at Johnny D’s, filling in for the late Mark Sandman on bass, when he first heard Brennan. "He had so much going on in terms of singing and persona, I thought, ‘Wow, this guy’s a frontman!’ And real frontmen don’t come along that often." They began working together. Love and Bombs took several years of choosing songs, retooling arrangements, recording, and re-recording. "I think Jake’s songwriting grew as we worked. He became less Springsteeny, more universal and emotionally honest.’

Brennan was a fledgling writer when he and Kolderie met, but he was a veteran performer. He’d played his first gig with the hardcore punk outfit Cast Iron Hike at age 19. "Right after that first show, at Sir Morgan’s Cove in Worcester, I knew it was right. I felt completely comfortable on stage, and even today, that’s where I feel the least anxious."