Dogs, Cajuns Top Local Picks List

Young alternative rockers and a band led by a septuagenarian Louisiana Cajun make up this installment of Pop Beat’s periodic assessment of recordings by locally based talent. The scale ranges from * (poor) to **** (excellent), with three stars denoting a solid recommendation.

***, Lost Dog “Spiritual Disneyland� Shindig

Few bands are more aptly named than Lost Dog. The Long Beach trio’s second album finds singer-guitarist Mike Pekovich wandering a desolate landscape full of drug addiction, boredom, homelessness and romantic hell, searching for a place that feels like home.

You’d have a mighty crowded kennel if you rounded up all the downcast, alienated post-punk bands that are running loose, but Lost Dog avoids the dreary whining and tuneless howling that often afflicts the breed. Most of “Spiritual Disneyland� hits with a ferocious, dense swarm of guitars, but the blast is tempered by varied textures and dynamic shifts within songs, and it is made accessible by Lost Dog’s developing sense of melody. Key sources are Husker Du and, in the album’s occasional folk-influenced strains, Richard Thompson. It would be hard to find two better guides for a band seeking to explore aural and thematic darkness.

After a promising but rough-hewn 1988 debut, Lost Dog, which also includes drummer James Ross and bassist Scott Jessup, is gaining focus, nuance and control. That is evident in the multifaceted emotions expressed in such songs as “Waiting for the Real World� and “Spiritual Disneyland.� Both songs race through images full of foreboding and disgust, with an undercurrent of suicidal violence. But they also manifest a poignant yearning for warmth and meaning. At the heart of the album is a sincere cover of John Denver’s “Country Roads,� which makes the longing for sanctuary explicit. There’s even a touch of black humor in the subterranean, homesick lyrical telegraphy of “Lost Dog,� the band’s theme song (it was also on their first album): “Dog pound, been found. Impound, hosed down. Day seven, go to heaven--lost dog.�

Lost Dog tries an assortment of lyrical angles and conceits, from symbolism to narrative, as it depicts characters seeking, but not finding, an emotional home. In “Was Just a Friend,� the sympathetic protagonist tries to embrace a pitiable junkie, only to be whipped into howling anger by the futility of his rescue effort. “God Box� could be the fevered dream of a homeless man, with its vision of a complete, unbroken world contained in a packing crate. Lost Dog chronicles romantic sunderings straightforwardly and with deep feeling on “I Can’t Pretend Anymore� and “Green Once Again,� a folk-rock waltz that ends with a glimmer of renewal.

Bands that exult in darkness are liars, poseurs or incipient psychopaths. Clearly, Lost Dog isn’t among them: The seven-minute concluding opus, “Failure of Logic,� reaches in its last movement for a somewhat forced and unconvincing global-scale affirmation, in which Pekovich suddenly comes up sounding like Michael Stipe. In the more credible early sections of the episodic song, Lost Dog depicts kindnesses found, connections made and energy unleashed in the life of a harried, outcast rock band. Lost Dog’s involving, passionate and furiously rocking album is an affirmation in itself.

(Lost Dog plays April 24 at the Fullerton Hofbrau, 323 N. State College Blvd. (714) 870-7400.)

Shindig, P.O. Box 1616, Port Hueneme, Calif., 93041.

***, The Louisiana Cajun Trio, “Homage� Living Tradition Productions

This one won’t make the MARS or KROQ playlist, but it’s wonderful dance music all the same. Unlike, say, Nitzer Ebb or Nine Inch Nails, a Cajun band can’t just crank up the machines in the studio and figure it will lead to dance-floor action upon playback. The making of the music is almost inseparable from the purpose for which it’s made; consequently, it can be hard for the players to achieve the right feel without a roomful of people doing the waltz and two-step.

That’s never a problem on “Homage,� by the Los Angeles-Orange County trio led by Wilfred Latour, the 70-year-old singer-accordionist who learned his art as a tyke in Louisiana from some of Cajun music’s pioneers. No dancers allowed in the studio? Well, this trio turns the very act of playing into a dance.

Latour produces an incredibly rich, presence-filled sound on his button accordion, with sweet, nimble solo flights and a sucking-bellows bass foundation that really drives the music. Fiddler Tom Sauber is Latour’s dancing partner, keeping a personality and sprightly motion of his own as he follows the accordionist’s lead. Guitarist Carolyn Russell sets up a firm beat in a band where all the players are highly rhythm-conscious. The recording quality is excellent, with an immediacy that makes you think you could reach out and hand the players a beer.

“Homage� covers 17 songs drawn from Louisiana tradition, including a reading of “Jolie Blonde,� Cajun’s moldiest oldie, that is made fresh by Sauber’s lyrical fiddle embroidery. Latour sings everything in the traditional Cajun manner, which means his voice is as sturdy and coarse as a burlap sack. He sounds as if he’s 70--a vital 70. So does every other Cajun singer worth his gumbo, regardless of chronological age.

Everything here is sung in French, except the rocking, zydeco-style “I Like the Way You Look.� Needed, but missing from the album notes, are lyrics or lyrical synopses. Still, it isn’t hard to get Latour’s emotional drift. The rising vocal call on “What Am I Going to Do to See You?� speaks of longing unfulfilled; you can conjure up your own bittersweet love story to go with the lovely waltz, “Madame Sosthene.�

Mainly, this is music that’s impossible to sit still to--a point driven home by the wondrous finale, “Baisse-bas Moreau.� Latour goes it alone--just a bluesy vocal, a tapping foot, and an accordion that weaves enchanting, easy-rolling but quickly turning rhythms in which you can hear some of Fats Domino’s roots. This is music that sounds very old and very fresh at the same time.

(The Louisiana Cajun Trio plays the first Friday of every month at 7:30 p.m. at the Masonic Hall, 9635 Venice Blvd., Culver City.)

Living Tradition Productions, 13232 Pinto Road, Garden Grove, Calif., 92643.

** Medicine Rattle “Unbottled�, Cargo/Earth Music

“Undisciplined� would have been a more descriptive title for this debut album. Medicine Rattle’s singer, Melanie MacDowell, is a potentially fine roots-rocker who undermines herself with incessant grandstanding and overreaching.

MacDowell’s go-for-baroque approach becomes so shrill and grating as “Unbottled� unbottles itself that you wish she’d put a cork in it. There is hardly a note she doesn’t want to chomp and stretch like some wad of bubble gum, hardly a monosyllable that she can avoid drawing out until it becomes a mouthful.

Nature may abhor a vacuum; MacDowell abhors a clean, strong vocal line, favoring a fluttering vibrato warble that makes it sound as if her windpipe has gone into fibrillation. She wants to pour it all out (and more) at every moment; good, emotive singing requires an ebb and flow in keeping with what a song is saying. Calling all attention to her stylistic quirks, MacDowell ends up undermining her material and dominating a very sharp, efficiently rocking R & B band that has all the discipline it needs, whether playing in a funky Memphis-soul groove or with a chunky Rolling Stones feel. Producer Billy Zoom, the X alumnus, should have given the players more juice, and the singer a lot less.

There would be no point in ripping MacDowell’s style if she didn’t have talent. In fact, her raspier blues intonations recall Concrete Blonde’s terrific singer, Johnette Napolitano. Sometimes, her all-out approach does work: on the opening track, “Broken Heart & Alcohol,� MacDowell’s keyed-up approach is right for a tale of a woman sent over the edge of desperation by guilt over a romantic blowup.

More often it works the other way, as potentially good material is overrun. “Get Back Home� has all the makings of a fine ballad of frayed, worn-out melancholy. Instead of capturing the world-weariness in the story and letting a tired ache envelope the song, MacDowell sings it with amphetamine jumpiness. Much of the material is above average. “Daily Heels� has a nifty scenario, in which MacDowell, playing the part of a woman apparently adrift and without prospects, listens jealously to the purposeful click-click-click of dressed-for-success footwear outside her window. Suffice to say that her delivery obliterates, rather than magnifies, the song’s expressive possibilities.

Cargo/Earth Music, 5718 Lamas St., San Diego, Calif., 92122.

** 1/2, The Muffs “New Love� (45 r.p.m. single), Sympathy for the Record Industry

Nothing fancy here: just noisy, spirited garage rock with a punkish edge from a band that includes two former members of the Pandoras. “New Love,� the A-side, finds singer-lead guitarist Kim Shattuck growling on the verses (no prissy girlishness for her), and bubbling over sweetly on the choruses (well, girlish effervescence has its place). After its true-love pledge, the B-side is given over to two put-downs of inconstant lovers, delivered with plenty of scorn, but an unabated sense of fun. The Muffs are crude, rude, catchy and endearingly sloppy. If the Go-Gos were garage-rock’s fresh-faced cheerleaders, Shattuck is their truant sister.

(The Muffs play tonight at El Nuevo Monterey, 601 N. Harbor Blvd., Santa Ana. (714) 753-3350.)

Sympathy for the Record Industry, P.O. Box 1852, Orange, Calif., 92668.

** 1/2, 3D Picnic, “New Wave Party� Cargo/Earth Music

After putting out two fine albums of original material, former Orange County rocker Don Burnet and the rest of his L.A.-based band retired to their laboratory to experiment on other bodies of work. The result on this lighthearted six-track EP isn’t always pretty, but it’s fun.

3D pays straightforward tribute just once, with a blitzing remake of the B-52’s “Strobelight.� Tinkering improves upon one original: the Tears for Fears hit, “Head Over Heels,� is revved up and played as if it were an outtake from the first Pretenders album.

Otherwise, weirdness prevails. The Pet Shop Boys’ “West End Girls� is taken out of a London neighborhood and set down in the old West, with a frenzied big-screen cowboy movie treatment. “Los Angeles,� by X, becomes joke fodder as 3D couples it with Erasure’s “A Little Respect,� which is done honky-tonk style--a 3D interpretation of honky-tonk, that is, with roller-rink organ subbing for fiddles and steel guitars.

Burnet mocks Sting’s sensitivity, and 3D pokes fun at classic-rock’s preservationist instincts, in a cracked reading of “Message in a Bottle.� Veering between avant-garde deconstruction of the tune and open schoolyard ridicule of its sentiment, 3D Picnic pulls off the satire. Half-measures would have been dreadful, but this works because it’s so thoroughly disrespectful and over-the-top outrageous.

The other track, “Skulls,� turns a bloody Misfits hard-core number about dismemberment into a fervently valedictory folk-rock elegy.

This is just a diversion for 3D Picnic, but it may help explain the band’s pop-rock savvy. Perhaps taking existing pop apart and poking around with the pieces is one way to learn how the thing works.

Cargo/Earth Music, 5718 Lamas St., San Diego, Calif., 92122.