Grant Hart – The Argument
Former Hüsker Dü man’s long-awaited double-album based on Paradise Lost.
Drummer, guitarist, pianist, singer, libertine – his polymath contrarian tendencies have surely militated against the wider recognition Grant Hart deserves. But finally he’s got a proper record label to trumpet what feels like his magnum opus. The Argument is a bedazzled tapestry of popular song pastiche, found sound and organ-heavy grooves wherein Hart makes a selective dash through John Milton’s vast tale of angels and devils, Adam and Eve, the meaning of life… With his bijou gift for melody, over 75 minutes Hart delivers abundantly: there’s the Kurt Weill punk-stompf I Am Death, while Underneath The Apple Tree choreographs the fall of man to a Roaring ’20s jazz ditty complete with kazoo solo. Meanwhile, with It Isn’t Love and (It Was) A Most Disturbing Dream, Hart nails another two keepers onto his personal garage rock honour roll. Not so much paradise lost as heaven right here.