New Roman Times

AMG Review of New Roman Times

Stewart Mason
All Music Guide

In 2002, Camper Van Beethoven reunited for a nationwide tour on what seemed like a whim, occasioned by a closet-cleaning belated issue of a song-by-song cover of Fleetwood Mac's Tusk, an album they'd recorded as a joke back in 1987. The tour must have gone really well, because unexpectedly, the full band -- the original lineup of David Lowery on vocals and guitar, violinist Jonathan Segel, guitarist Greg Lisher, bassist Victor Krummenacher, and drummer Chris Pedersen, with alumni Chris Molla and Monks of Doom cohort David Immerglück pitching in -- trooped into the studio to record an all new album that, surprisingly enough, stands with the group's finest work. A loosely connected semi-ock opera telling the story of a Texas teenager who joins the military after a 9/11-like event, becomes disillusioned, and joins an anti-government militia, this is the most explicitly political record of Camper Van Beethoven's career, resurrecting and amplifying the themes that colored the band's last two albums, Our Beloved Revolutionary Sweetheart and Key Lime Pie. While some of Lowery's trademark surrealist jokes and hilarious one-liners factor into these songs, there's an undeniable darkness to the album, both lyrically (the story seems to end with the ex-soldier becoming a suicide bomber) and musically. The band's usual forays into faux-ethnic instrumentals, country, and psychedelia are less lighthearted than before, but their tour-sharpened chops are intact, making this the tightest, best-sounding album of their career. In particular, the sardonically folky "Militia Song," the deep-psych swirl of "I Hate This Part of Texas," and "Come Out," which is built upon Steve Reich's 1966 ape-loop piece of the same title, show the group's effortless eclecticism, and the bitter "Might Makes Right" and the Twin Peaks-quoting "That Gum You Like Is Back in Style" are as good as any songs Camper Van Beethoven did in the '80s. Like their fellow college rock stars Mission of Burma and Antietam did earlier in 2004, Camper Van Beethoven have pulled off the difficult trick of not only reuniting, but picking up exactly where they had left off.