Cracker

What the world needs now is another Cracker album, like I need a hole in my head.

Apologies to David Lowery, but that twist on the delicious line from his band’s 1992 crackling chestnut “Teen Angst” was a sentiment shared by more than one of his fans in light of Cracker’s mysterious, self-absorbed meandering after 1993’s killer Kerosene Hat. That album, which yielded the college-radio anthems “Low” and “Eurotrash Girl,” was a tough act to follow judging by the Lowery-lite musings on the band’s next two studio discs and the “we’ve run out of things to say” best-of/rarities compilation, Garage d’Or.

Could the cynical and clever Lowery still write songs that were cynical and clever? Could Lowery and longtime bandmate/co-writer Johnny Hickman recapture Kerosene Hat‘s high-octane firepower, which was so free of the hollow Mellencampian muck that dogged their later efforts?

The answers to these questions are laid bare on Forever, Cracker’s latest release. The album’s title correctly implies that some of this stuff should have the staying power of “Low,” which was years ahead of the other post-punk radio fodder of the early ’90s. Lowery says he wanted to create cool music without having to dumb it down for the masses, and in a sense, he’s pulled it off. The melodies are clear and crisp, and the arrangements are full and rich, without sounding like aural gilded lilies. Kenny Margolis (ex-Mink DeVille) deserves beaucoup praise for his keyboard work, which invokes the earth-shaking Hammond organ rumblings of Deep Purple’s Jon Lord.

More important, the lyrics in several songs are as quirky and compelling as ever. In the British-infused rocker “Guarded By Monkeys,” Lowery conjures up some cheesy, swashbuckling, King Solomon’s Mines imagery with the chorus hook, “You are so beautiful / You should be guarded by monkeys” (which, incidentally, is a good candidate for the pickup line hall of fame). And who else but Lowery could scrape together, in the Beatleish anthem “Shine,” not one but two phrases to rhyme with Burt Bacharach (“Russian acrobat” and “What’s New Pussycat”)?

Two or three clunkers aside, Forever leaves the listener with a sense that Lowery and Hickman are picking up where Kerosene Hat left off, but hardly retreading the vintage Cracker sound. Lowery’s got his most accomplished band lineup yet and a full night’s set list that has the potential to kick some serious (and even cynical) ass.