Consumer Guide Album

Jinx Lennon: Trauma Themes Idiot Times [Septic Tiger, 2009]
Worried about bumming out fans you'd think were used to his moods by 2009, Lennon has old helpmeet Paula Flynn echo him sweetly on most of these songs and leaves room for a horn section a lot mellower than he is. But he also makes sure his punky-rootsy band drives the trauma themes on, and although they get winded after an opening sprint, his arsenal of vocables doesn't quit. On the merry "Folk Music for the Midlands," the energy sustains even when Lennon and Flynn are bidding each other a resigned and lyrical farewell. "I must keep it awkward and real," Lennon insists on the long track of more or less that title that precedes an even longer finale. And that goes as well when he's advising you to stick a knife in a burglar's eye. A−