Loose Fur - Loose Fur

As supergroups go, this one—featuring Jeff Tweedy, Jim O'Rourke, and Glenn Kotche—is almost as good as Rockpile, on par with Blind Faith, and a whole lot better than Ciccone Youth. It's also a project that makes sonic sense, in a twain-shall-meet way. Wunderkind experimental guitarist-producer O'Rourke has been creating warped Americana since the late '90s, while on 2002's Yankee Hotel Foxtrot, Tweedy and company finely deconstructed the alt-country rock they'd worked so hard to create in the first place. The two major problems that afflict projects of this sort—overindulgent twaddle and ill-suited explorations—surface here, but they only hold sway over a third of the album. The tunes that work the best are the Tweedy-fronted ones, especially "Laminated Cat" and "Chinese Apple," both of which are seven-plus minutes of gorgeously subtle guitar, weird background noises, poly-limbed percussion, and oblique lyrics delivered by a melodic-minded mumble mouth. - Mike McGonigal