Clydesdale leads disc roundup

Deadly cowgirls and surly hard-core dudes lead the way in this month's roundup of local discs:

THE CLYDESDALE, "Horse Feathers" (myspace.com/theclydesdale): Breaking up is hard to do, especially for Clydesdale singer Paige Overton, because it means there's a fresh body to dispose of.

"What once was love is now fertilizer," she growls on "Dale Toro," bidding adieu to a former flame with a shovelful of topsoil.

An album of wide open spaces and sweet revenge, the Clydesdale's latest reads like a Louis L'Amour paperback penned in blood and bourbon. It spans hard-eyed honky-tonk awash in reverbed guitar, plaintively sung paeans to country women and spare, steamy come-ons hotter than a smokin' gun barrel.

It's some compelling stuff -- unless, of course, you happen to be one of Overton's ex's.

THE BIG FRIENDLY CORPORATION, "Building Better Machines To Replace Us All" (myspace.com/thebigfriendly corporation): Sweet and sardonic at once, a love letter and a letter bomb, The Big Friendly Corporation turns napalm into nectar on this sharp-edged daydream.

Storm clouds of whirring, purring synth and squalls of formless guitar fashion a ceaselessly shifty backdrop for frontman Ryan Marth's bittersweet musings on drinking too much, not smiling enough and just trying to get by. The disc swings right along with Marth's moods: "Nothing To Say" is a finger snappin' kiss off that sounds as if it were spun from cotton candy, "Say Yourself" a hazy slow burn with barbed-wire guitar; "$200 Tennis Shoes" a blithely sung pop dagger about how we've ruined the planet.

Ah well, at least this disc speaks in humanity's favor.

DIVIDED BY ELI, "Divided By Eli" (myspace.com/dividedbyeli): His heart weighs a ton, and he sings every song as if it's lodged in his throat, robbing him of breath. "Hope is all but lost," Divided By Eli frontman Ryan announces on his band's latest EP, but you'd never know it from listening to these dudes: Their tunes are impossibly earnest, one anthem after the next, with a buoyancy seemingly coated in Kevlar.

Polished to a sheen, Divided By Eli's radio-friendly rock is colored by pleading vocals, muscular guitars, layered harmonies and big, cloud-scraping choruses. They've got what it takes to be on the Warped Tour and make your kid sister all weak in the knees.

LAST RITES, "Last War" (Face First Records): Sounding kind of like Agnostic Front being thrown through a plate glass window, Last Rites recall those denim-clad days when bands like the Cro-Mags, Crumbsuckers and D.R.I. first smelted hard-core velocity and righteous indignation with burly thrash riffs.

With an album full of brass-knuckled battle cries, Last Rites is defiantly old school. Their singer slurs and snorts over jumpy, anxious bass lines, lunging guitars and rubber-armed drumming. They alternate blindingly fast rippers with elephantine, midpaced calls-to-arms that practically sweat testosterone.

This is war. Wear a helmet.

Jason Bracelin's "Sounding Off" column appears on Tuesdays. Contact him at 383-0476 or e-mail him at jbracelin@ reviewjournal.com.