Turbo Ocho

Album Review

Rock & roll meets The Real World on Turbo Ocho, the fifth studio effort by Roger Clyne & the Peacemakers. After touring in support of 2007's No More Beautiful World, the band decamped to Mexico in early 2008 to write, arrange, and record eight songs in eight days. The experiment was filmed and broadcast on the internet in daily installments, allowing die-hard fans the chance to view rehearsals and hear each song immediately after its completion. Turbo Ocho is the result of that reality-recording process — a surprisingly solid compilation of eight inspired tunes, three bonus cuts, and a DVD documenting the process. Going further, it's an interesting intersection between art and commerce, music and marketing, deliberation and instinct. The Peacemakers don't exactly resurrect the gun slinging, outlaw-inspired roots rock of Americano — that era seemed to end with No More Beautiful World, the band's first album to barely reference their southwestern home — but they spike Turbo Ocho with flashes of mariachi horns, heartland twang, and ample guitar muscle. Arizona is still the band's muse, even if Clyne no longer evokes the state in his lyrics, and the Peacemakers aptly sound at home here.

Turbo Ocho shines its brightest on those songs written during the motivated eight-day stretch, from the harmonica-helmed heartland rock of "Mercy" to the hauntingly sparse "Persephone," where Clyne woos a Grecian goddess with a syncopated guitar riff. "State of the Art" flaunts an instantly memorable chorus — the sort of bouncing, melody-driven thing that inspires drivers to roll down their windows and head for the nearest open road — while the pedal steel twang and elegiac vocals of "Summer 39" are perfect in their imperfection, having been recorded in one take (unbeknownst to the bandmates themselves) during a practice session. Perhaps the strongest track is "I Know You Know," a straightforward piece of classic rock in the vein of Americano's "I Don't Need Another Thrill," and one of Clyne's best vocal performances in half a decade. It's doubly impressive that producer Clif Norrell worked at the same feverish pace as the band, mixing and mastering each song within the specified 24-hour window, and Turbo Ocho's production — while understandably hurried — still sounds lean and crisply solid. Videographer Jason Boots also burned the midnight oil, and his daily video clips are an integral part of this album's success, as several songs don't fully come alive without their visual components. "I Can Drink the Water" is a prime example; sandwiched between "Mercy" and "I Do" (Clyne's finest rock & roll song since 1997's "Dolly"), it sounds like a holdover from the No More Beautiful World sessions, an out-of-place tune that's best suited for an alcohol-filled siesta. But after watching the song's creation on video, wherein the bandmates climb into a friend's boat and compose the tune while touring the Sea of Cortés, the trumpet riffs and casually spun vocals seem perfectly allowable, if not wholly appropriate. So while Turbo Ocho is strong enough to hold its weight as a standard album, it's meant to be consumed as something else, and the bulk of its 11 tracks are not definitive performances but rather blueprints for what they can (and will) become in concert. Perfectionists might find fault here — there's a flubbed moment in the palm-muted intro to "I Do," for example — but perfectionists have no business dealing with music this immediate, this inspired, this raw. Forget the lackadaisical moments on No More Beautiful World; forget the three bonus cuts that can't hold a candle to the heart of Turbo Ocho; this is heartfelt Americana finding a home in a modern, technology-driven world.