Model Engine

Item: The Lean Years Tradition
Author: Steven S. Baldwin

The Lean Years Tradition

(1997)

Reviewed by Steven S. Baldwin

Discogs Bandcamp Apple Music TIDAL Amazon Music Spotify YouTube Music

Label SaraBellum RecordsThe Phantom Tollbooth1997

alternative rock art rock modern rock pop rock

With The Lean Years Tradition, Model Engine manages to maintain a perfect blend of poetic lyricism and pop appeal with their powerful playing. No mean feat. I've said it before, and I'll say it again: They play modern rock and roll like a battered old Fifties pickup truck tooling down the highway at top speed with chicken coops rattling around in the bed. There is an appealing sense of reckless danger that their songs just might run off the road or fall apart at any given moment. Their brash, noisy art pop with retro-progressive underpinnings swathed in a Nineties sensibility is nearly peerless. If you haven't heard their previous albums under the Black Eyed Sceva moniker, just pick this one up instead--or even if you have heard those! Get them all now!

The Lean Years Tradition shows growth, both in their trademark style and overall performance. It's tighter and more focused--not to mention notably balanced lyrically, managing to be both literate and intelligent while also being accessible. Brooding yet hopeful. Poetic yet visceral. Theological yet relevant. (Furthermore, they use uncommon words not readily found on your average pop album: reticent; suture; Pavlovian; halcyon; savoir-faire; genuflect.)

The themes are equally diverse, focusing on prostitution and pornography as well as persecution and the price of faith. The result is a surprisingly rare symmetry that provokes thought, encourages action, and excites the imagination--as well as offering some pleasant poetry:

I've been hanging 'round your windmills
Making mountains out of molehills
Where are you Rosinante?
I'm paper mache in the potter's clay
I spend all my days coming out of shape.
("Rosinante")

Of course, the lyric sheet will help you decipher some of the more muted vocals, and in no time, you'll be singing along heartily.

Model Engine is not just a mere band of buddies, but a talented group of young music-making artists. Add this band to the list of emotionally resonating, cerebrally encouraging, and faith inspiring bands like Adam Again, Over the Rhine, and Vigilantes of Love. They may not have been around as long as those others, but their careful craftsmanship makes them worthy of inclusion on such an impressive list. Besides, they are creating exactly what more Christians should be doing: something smart, relevant, and singularly distinctive.

5 tocks