BRETT NETSON

Simple Work for the Dead

thisisthenewblack.com

Acoustic guitars anchor Brett Netson’s solo debut, but it’s his electric tones—coarse, buzzing and intended to agitate—that give this album its post-apocalyptic feel. The Built to Spill guitarist and longtime Caustic Resin leader plays through amps that sound as if they’re powered by iffy generators, and indeed given this disc’s major themes—greed, war, environmental and economic collapse—there’s a sense these 10 tracks were cut the electricity-starved morning after Armageddon. The psychedelic desert-rock jams “Preaching to the Choir,” “Someone Else” and “Lupus” kick up gnarly dust clouds, while “God is Wrong” recasts “Knockin’ on Heaven’s Door” as a kind of hazy elegy for mankind. “Keep your head above water,” Netson sings elsewhere. Easier said than done.