Songwriter
Steve Wynn, the former
Dream Syndicate frontman, has been on a tear since 1996 when he offered
Melting in the Dark. Since then, his records have featured howling, wailing rock & roll and deep, dark acoustic reflections -- all of them bearing his trademark noir-ish lyrics that offer the shadowy side of life, love, and violence. He's employed a variety of musicians, and they've always sounded like hired guns. On
...Tick...Tick...Tick he's got himself a real band. They're all younger than he is, and they have the hunger it takes to really execute
Wynn's unique songs. Start with drummer
Linda Pitmon, who acts as co-producer (along with
Wynn and
Craig Schumacher) on these sides. Add to this the fact that the entire band (including
Dave DeCastro on bass and guitarist
Jason Victor) plots the arrangements.
Wynn's willful loss of total control has benefited him in spades. The set jumps out of the gate howling with "Wired," where it sounds as if
Wynn is singing through a megaphone. It's followed by the creepy rocker "Cindy, It Was Always You," co-written with über hard-boiled crime fiction novelist
George Pelecanos. On "Killing Me,"
Wynn employs
Bo Diddley's "Who Do You Love?" guitar riff and mutates it into something utterly unhinged. The shuffle gets moved into overdrive as
Victor makes his guitar scream, roar, and squeal while
Wynn holds down the rhythm and overdubs a distorted slide. It's followed by a seemingly simple ballad entitled "The Deep End," which rises in drama to the breaking point about two thirds of the way through. It's full of a kind of emptiness and questioning about the experience of loss; it expresses fear at the ensuing emptiness and the apprehension of being in this space.
DeCastro's bass enters about a minute in, and propels the guitars as
Pitmon accents every line as if it were the gospel truth -- and for the singer, it is. The swirling beauty that rises in the middle of the track transforms the protagonist's voice, as if by voicing his fear he can somehow live with it or transcend it. But the music becomes the "deep end" that he enters -- and it enters him and becomes part of who he is. There is no resolution at the end of the tune; after seven minutes the questions still hang there, waiting to be answered.