Upper Crust’s ‘Delusions of Grandeur’: It’s crazy good
When Donald Trump can find a free minute between tweets, he should sit down at the White House hi-fi and listen to the new Upper Crust album “Delusions of Grandeur.” The Boston band has stuffed its latest LP with everything Donald digs: bombast, wild ideas, a deep respect for the 1 percent (sample song title: “I’ll Be Wintering Elsewhere”). The members even have glorious hair of dubious origin.
If you’re just catching up with the Crust, the fourpiece sounds like AC/DC and looks like Louis XIV (powdered wigs, tights and all!). The difference is main songwriter Lord Bendover (known to his mom as Nat Freedberg) pairs his big rock with witty, sardonic lyrics — it’s AC/DC by way of Warren Zevon or Randy Newman. The best examples from “Delusions of Grandeur” come with hot rod-surf rock homage “Little Castrato” and the could-be Cheap Trick number “Flagrante Delicto.”
Like any good musical parody, the songs have to stand up. Jokes don’t work without killer riffs and well-delivered vocals. This is not a problem for the Upper Crust. If you substituted Crust’s absurd lyrics in power ballad “Frippery and Foppery” with some (admittedly, equally absurd) Journey lyrics, the song would be just right for awkward ’80s junior high slow dances.
Hear the metal magic (and see the finely tailored getups) of the Crust at its album release party at
Most local musicians know Steve Mayone. Before he moved to New York to make it big, Mayone acted as sideman extraordinaire playing with Bow Thayer, Tim Gearan, Susan Cattaneo, a reformed Treat Her Right and others. Yeah, he also played solo gigs, but not enough of them — too often he was backing someone up.
When you hear his new album, “Sideways Rain,” you’ll wish he was here at home doing a month of gigs at Toad. As it is, you’ll only get one night with him at the Porter Square club — Mayone plays an album release show Tuesday at Toad. At the gig, Mayone will play nearly a dozen new folk-rock songs (or maybe that should be folksy rock songs?).
Mayone writes like Dylan when he’s simple and delicate (see “Time Moves On”). He pens songs that fit somewhere between the Dead’s “American Beauty” and Paul Simon’s “Still Crazy After All These Years” (check out “Rescue Me”). And he knows how to put a top-notch band together that can easily move between roadhouse rough and coffee house tender — the disc features the guitars of Russell Chudnofsky and Lyle Brewer and Andy Plaisted produces and plays drums. If you’ve been missing the Band (or even the Traveling Wilburys), you might want to discover Steve Mayone.