Drawing inspiration from late ’70s chartbusters, soulful country ballads, jangly alterno-rock standards and bar band rave ups, Dead Hot Workshop mine a very catchy musical groove on their major-label debut, transparently produced by Jim Scott.
“Lead Thoughts” and “Slice Of Life” meld Steve Larson and Brent Babb’s smooth guitar leads and power-pop chords with Brian Scott’s jaunty bass runs, while “Mr. S.O.B.” drops those guitars on top of a laid-back country lick. “River Otis” and “Sex With Strangers” manage to make arena-rock sound almost fresh. Curtis Grippe’s drumming provides an excellent backbone. Solid, stripped-down and propulsive, it leaves plenty of room for the weaving of this musical tapestry.
Babb delivers the lyrics with an odd mix of earnestness, disengagement and despair. The songs chart a decidedly nonlinear course through disintegrated relationships, societal breakdown, mind-numbing capitalism, the empty cynicism of modern culture and, in an unlikely coda, personal responsibility. These are obtuse, elliptical mosaics, drawing power from the careful arrangement of words, phrases, riffs and chords.