New Roman Times
Label: Pitch-A-Tent
Media: CD
Format: Album
WorkNameSort: New Roman Times
Sometimes you don’t know what you’re missing until it unexpectedly shows up. Such is the case with smart rock & roll, which has been so absent that it took Camper Van Beethoven’s return from a 15-year hiatus to remind us what it sounded like. Their comeback, New Roman Times, is a high-concept album that traces the exploits of a young man who, in the aftermath of a catastrophic event, joins the military, only to come out bitter and disillusioned. He joins a private military contractor in the occupied Republic of California, where his dealings with arms traffickers/drug runners lead to an opium addiction, and eventually, he’s radicalized enough to join a militia the CVB resistance group. It’s an absurdist parable for modern America that strikes with smart-bomb precision. Evidencing the same musical eclecticism that drove their ’80s output, they pen garage-psych odes to munitions, crypto-fascist polka-ska tunes, bluegrass paeans to right-wing Unabombers, bubbling acid-rock narcotic anthems and country-rock rave-ups. Forging their tightest, surest album top-to-bottom, CVB’s joyously cockeyed sensibility is an ideal tonic for a world that grows more surreal by the moment.
This article appears in Oct 6-12, 2004.