They touch every now and again on late ’60s psychedelic garage pop, but at their core, there’s very little about The Ribeye Brothers that one could classify in one way or another as nonsense. Not no-nonsense, no-frills, but very few. On their fourth album, Call of the Scrapheap — released this year on Main Man Records — the Jersey-based five-piece prove heavy on wit and self-deprecation and light on flourish. That’s not to insinuate the 14 tracks on the 40-minute album, all but five of which clock in under three minutes, are somehow lacking, just that they’re efficient in a classic pop sense. Verses lead to strong choruses, organs complement guitars, and vocalist Tim Cronin and guitarist Jon Kleiman lead the band through good-time misery that makes as much use of Cronin‘s lyrical wit as any other element, the earliest cuts “Apples, Plums and Pears” and “Come in Last” setting the tone for the mood that the rest of the album follows through.

That mood? Filled with dry sarcasm, pointed self-critique and sometimes hilarious turns of phrase. “Apples, Plums and Pears” offers a straightforward hook in, “It’s cloudy all the time/The sun it never shines,” but “Coward’s Way” turns cliche on its head with “Some say it’s the coward’s way/I say cowards stay/I say cowards stay too long,” and “Good as New” asserts that “My good as new/Is neither good nor new.” Cronin‘s voice is perfectly suited to delivering these lines, he keeps a tongue-in-cheek feel that neither undercuts the sincerity in what he’s saying nor makes Call of the Scrapheap too wallowing. In addition, the upbeat rocking vibes of “Come in Last” and buzzsaw fuzz of “Smart Like Aristotle” provide an endearing contrast to the negativity of prose, giving The Ribeye Brothers a more complex vibe than they’d have if all the tracks were as much downers musically as they seem on the surface to be lyrically. Even as Cronin asserts that it’s cloudy all the time, the music behind him — provided by Kleiman, guitarist Brent Sisk, bassist Joe Calandra and drummer Neil O’Brien (who also did the album cover) — is as sunny as one could ask it to be.

I’d be remiss if I didn’t note somewhere along the line band’s connections to Monster Magnet, of which Calandra, Kleiman and Cronin were members at one point or another, but ultimately, apart from some light touches of proto-space rock on “Wally Pipp,” the two acts have very, very little in common sonically, and most of the comparisons one could draw between Call of the Scrapheap and anything from early Magnet could be drawn as well to any number of psychedelic garage acts, though Monster Magnet guitarist Phil Caivano co-produced Call of the Scrapheap with Kleiman and Matt Hyde mastered, so there are connections one way or another. Still, not much likeness in terms of sound, and as Cronin opines, “If you hate me/I know how you feel” in the chorus of the country-twanging “If You Hate Me,” The Ribeye Brothers have nothing at all if they don’t have a personality of their own. With the insistent push of “Disappointment Punch” and full-bodied guitar work of “Damaged,” the second half of the album stands up to the first both in aesthetic and point of view.

A Monkees cover in the form of the penultimate “Circle Sky” (originally from Head) gives me some idea of what The Brought Low might’ve sounded like had they come out from the Jersey Shore, and closer “Gunga Din” — also the longest cut on Call of the Scrapheap at a sprawling 4:57 — offers a barroom-ready singalong in the clever chorus, “I tried to drown my sorrows but the fuckers learned to swim/And they developed a taste for it and I’m their Gunga Din,” making for both another affirmation of Cronin‘s take-’em-down-a-peg-and-the-’em-is-you style and one of the record’s catchiest and most memorable stretches. A strong finish for an album full of quality songwriting both musical and lyrical. The Ribeye Brothers don’t seem like they’re going to take their material on the road anytime soon — they play shows in Jersey but it’s been almost four years since the last time I saw them; too long — but they remain a band worth knowing and whether you’ve heard them before or not, Call of the Scrapheap is an excellent showing of their specific brand of charm and why they’ve managed to endure for more than a decade.

The Ribeye Brothers, “Disappointment Punch” Live at the Brighton Bar, NJ, 2012

The Ribeye Brothers BigCartel Store

The Ribeye Brothers on Thee Facebooks

Main Man Records

Tags: Asbury Park, Call of the Scrapheap, Main Man Records, New Jersey, The Ribeye Brothers, The Ribeye Brothers Call of the Scrapheap

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