Musically Speaking... (Jammin' with George P.)

Well, it's finally here, the long-anticipated (at least by me) musical team-up between perennial cult fave rocker/ex-Dream Syndicate axeman Steve Wynn and long-time fan, hard-boiled crimewriter George Pelecanos. The result, "Cindy, It Was Always You" is on Wynn's new album "Tick...Tick...Tick" and in a better world (one where rock radio still mattered), it would be blasting out of car stereos, transistors and blasters everywhere.

I expected the result would be a fix for their mutual Boss jones; a little self-indulgent release of their respective inner Springsteens. But this thumping, harmonica-honking ode to the blown chances that happen when you get lead around by your dick recalls nothing so much as the Stone's Midnight Rambler. It's also -- maybe, just maybe -- just as disturbing. Yeah, it's a man's man's man's world here, but is that all it is?

Pelecanos' lyrics, plus Wynn's squeezed out vocals, suggest that this ditty just might be about more than a simple frustrated drunken lout's lament after "one or two" -- the possibillty that the singer's actually stalking Cindy makes for a chilling prospect. Especially when he claims he's already "had" her best friend.

"Girl, you leave me haunted," the narrator chides, but ya gotta wonder who's haunting who... And is it just me, or is that album cover a way-cool rip-off nod to the Velvet Underground or what?

By the way, the rest of the album rocks, too. To his credit, Wynn continues to refuse to be pinned down, and seldom plays it safe -- there are more (aural) textures on here than a fabric store.