Last Chance Records/This Is American Music

If there’s any justice in this old world, at least a quarter of the people who bought the most recent album by Wilco (America’s current can-do-no-wrong sweethearts of the rodeo) will lay hands to Glossary’s Long Live All Of Us. Heck: even a tenth will do it – it’ll just take longer for them to each tell somebody else … and for each of those folks to pass the word along … and for the rest of the planet to eventually find out that Long Live All Of Us is one of 2011’s best band-for-Everyman albums.

This is what music sounds like that’s played because it has to be – rather than because the band can afford to.

15 years and 7 full-length albums into it, Glossary are helpless captives to the tunes that are in their heads, hearts, and souls – playing a mix of Southern soul/funk, raggedy-ass-alt-country-crunch, acoustic ballads that’ll alternately give you chills and wrap you up in their old Carhartt jacket, and tunes that’ll make you dance regardless of who’s watching. Within the tracks of Long Live All Of Us dwell sweet gee-tars (alternately crunchy/twangy/acoustic); keyboard lines that wheedle their way into your head, put their feet up, and reside there happily; just-enough Jim-Price-and-Bobby-Keys-style horns; and a bass/drum rhythm section that’s equally at home chugging along on Stax-flavored riffs as they are laying down a soft carpet for some Gospel-like reflections. And on top of/in amongst it all you’ll find lyrics that are smart, heartfelt, and real, delivered in a manner much the same.

“Wait!” you say. “That sounds like you could be describing … vital American music!”

“Ahh!” I say. “Now we’re getting somewhere.”

I’m done preaching – the rest is up to you. Put an ear to Long Live All Of Us and dig it all. Grab your baby and shake your bad selves around the kitchen to the one-two funky punch of “Trouble Won’t Last” and “A Shoulder To Cry On”. (The former features a killer piano groove; the latter is all happy-happy chikka-chikka guitars and thick punches of horns with a chorus that swings into the coolest falsetto you’ve heard since Dinosaur Jr.’s “Start Choppin’”). The tumble/rumble of Eric Giles’ drums and Bingham Barnes’ bass leads the way right through “When We Were Wicked”, out the back door, and face-first into “Heart Full Of Wanna” – clever lyrics, great formation-flyer harmonies, and a twin guitar squallfest jam at the end that dissolves into ozone and tattered-speaker-cone territory (courtesy of Todd Beene and Glossary frontman Joey Kneiser).

Slick your hair back and slow-dance your sweetheart to the faded bluejean doo-wop of “Under A Barking Moon”. Kelly Kneiser’s backing vocals weave their way beautifully throughout the album, adding depth and shimmer to tunes such as “Some Eternal Spark” and the album-closing “Ghosts In The Vapor” (featuring Giles’ miles-deep drums and soaring pedal steel by Beene).

Effortlessly shape-shifting without ever losing their identity, Glossary offers up a dozen slices of life on Long Live All Of Us.

You need to partake of this, people.