Mayday "Bushido Karaoke" (Saddle Creek) Entertainment Art

Frontman Ted Stevens is best known for his work with the bands Lullaby For The Working Class and Cursive, as well as hanging out with the Nebraskan indie wunderkinds of Connor Oberst and Rilo Kiley at Saddle Creek records. Mayday's contributions to the Omaha oeuvre finds itself falling a bit further back on the musical chronology, being indebted heavily to old country and folk in all its beer-soaked slide guitar glory. While Mayday's last album "I Know Your Troubles Have Been Long" suffered from a decidedly low-fi production which hid the orchestral contributions of the fiddles and horns, "Bushido Karaoke" takes advantage of the higher production value to highlight a much fuller, and welcome, sound. The opening song of "Pelf Help" recalls 50's cafeteria ballads gone horribly wrong and shows precisely what Tom Stevens can do with a few more dollars under his belt.

All this production still doesn't mask the fact that Mayday is slit-your-wrists bleak in its lyrics. This is the music that Johnny Cash listens to in Heaven, nodding his head and muttering "These kids are doin' somethin' right," until he realizes that there's nary a mention of a redeeming God anywhere. The song "Standing in Line at the Gates of Hell" chronicles the tale of a bartender condemned to serve the same patrons once again in Hell, while the Elliott Smith like "Rock and Roll Can't Save Your Life" is ironic only in that comparison. At worst, they sound like a low-rent Nick Cave (as in "Father Time"), with songs less epic, a bit more personal, and with less humor.

But people don't listen to Mayday for the good time feelings. The best example of Mayday's styling is the closing "Song of the Scaffold", where a condemned man sings a country ballad to his love with a noose around his neck. "I will love you more /when I'm swinging from the tree/ my soul's a stubborn pendulum/ it will rock my body free/" he muses. And as the door opens below him, the music drops off and only Tom Stevens' lyrics swing him to his never-ending rest. This is unrepentant drunken sad-bastard music for the PBR drinking, trucker-cap wearing indie set, plain and simple. Not that that's a bad thing. The Man in Black would be proud, but fans of the Polyphonic Spree should probably look elsewhere.

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