Northern Aggression
In his Eighties band the Dream Syndicate, singer- guitarist Steve Wynn subverted Sixties psychedelia with droning guitars and tangled skeins of lies and treachery, like a Velvet Underground score to a Fifties-noir film. Northern Aggression, made with his long-running Miracle 3, is a new peak in that hard-boiled moral aggression. In “Colored Lights,” Wynn sounds like Tom Petty stuck in a desert town with only feedback and attitude to shoot his way out. And Wynn doesn’t sound at all sorry in “We Don’t Talk About It”: “You stir up the shit/And you take away the dirt/And you’re left with a whole new disease.” You don’t argue with the guitars, either.
Listen to “Resolution”: