Sunwatchers and Eugene Chadbourne's "3 Characters"

Until this arrived, the NYC instrumental free-jazz/psych quartet Sunwatchers' synapse-scorching Illegal Moves was my favorite new record this year, and it remains a formidable slab. But 3 Characters -- cut in a couple of manic days back in October 2016 in the company of rustic avant-gardist Eugene Chadbourne -- has it beat, tying together more musical threads to which I'm partial than one is likely to hear on a single disc (or even a double LP like thisun). The project's premise is for the Noo Yawkers and Doc Chad to cover material by political punk rockers the Minutemen, archetypal Texan muso Doug Sahm (whose own variegated musical trip embraced all the shades of music -- black, brown, and white -- associated with his native San Antonio), and activist-experimentalist Henry Flynt (as direct a precursor as Chadbourne possesses, one whom Julian Cope, in Copendium, informs us was once fired from a sub gig with the Warhol-era Velvet Underground for injecting hillbilly fiddle into their somber drone trip).

The Minutemen songs, which occupy sides 1 and 2, lean heavily on Double Nickels On the Dime and Three Way Tie for Last -- my favorite LPs by the San Pedro trio -- and remind us how topical d. boon and Mike Watt's antiwar lyrics (particularly resonant for ex-Vietnam draft fugitive Chadbourne) remain, goddammit. On "The Price of Paradise," Chadbourne's goofy hick vocalismo recalls Minutemen succesor band fIREHOSE's frontman Ed Crawford, while Sunwatchers guitarist Jim McHugh's fuzz-and-wah warped Sharrockian skronk fits the music like a spiked glove. McHugh and his bandmates Jeff Tobias (reeds and keys), Peter Kerlin (bass), and Jason Robira (drums) deposit the aural equivalent of a howling tsunami in the midst of "Political Song for Michael Jackson To Sing," and make a psychedelic raga out of "Themselves."

Watt himself makes a trio of cameo appearances, reciting a text from Cold War-era newsman Edward R. Murrow before Sunwatchers and Chadbourne audaciously mash up Paranoid Time's "Joe McCarthy's Ghost" with Albert Ayler's "Ghosts" (giving versions of the latter I'd previously heard by Marc Ribot and X___X a run for their money), declaiming the lyrics to Doug Sahm's anthemic "Chicano" (which I found as poignant as the version of the Flatlanders' "Borderless Love" I heard Joe Ely perform a couple of months ago) acapella, and delivering a scathing intro to Henry Flynt's 1966 screed "Uncle Sam Do" (which the musos, led by Chadbourne's off-kilter banjo, transform from demented Delta blues into Chadbourne's signature atonal acid bluegrass, with saxman Tobias careening into Trane Meditations territory). In between, there's a sunshine-y side of Sahm songs that reminds us how much of West Coast psychedelic culture originated in Texas, capped by a version of "Give Me Back the Keys to My Heart" that hits like the Velvets at the Matrix.

Sonically adventurous and fearlessly political, 3 Characters is musical synthesis at its most engaging.