INDUSTRY AND THRIFT | SUGAR HILL

BY WILIAM HOGELAND | "Industry and Thrift" may be more nearly related to Wyclef Jean's hip-hop collage "Carnival" than to the bluegrass and punk-rock purism with which Bad Livers are so often branded. All the more impressive, then, that given its high degree of artistic ambition, the album is so short on pretentiousness. Good spirits abound. Livers eschew roots-rock cliché. "Industry and Thrift" may therefore be the roots-rock album of the turn of the century.

Which century, though, remains a question. Like roots rock, punk also had its first heyday in the mid-'70s, but with notable exceptions didn't then mix with country or soul. Now we take for granted that punk-related music can fraternize with hoedown, with blues, even with New Orleans parade. (Greg Garing, impresario of New York's Alphabet City Opry, looks like a Goth yet has a firmer grasp of the country idiom than anyone else in two generations.) But still: Can punk rock usefully be equated with ragtime, even with band concerts in small-town squares? If "Industry and Thrift" has anything to say about it, yes.

Bad Livers have recently stripped down. Danny Barnes and Mark Rubin are touring as a duet. (Barnes also tours and records solo; Rubin leads the klezmer group Rubinchik's Okestyr.) Favored sidemen and clever multi-tracking give "Industry and Thrift" its rich, seductive textures. The sound is deeply burnished but rough. What's punk and folk is the DIY ruggedness, the pervasive skepticism, native to garage and church, about the worth of mere chops. Brilliant sonic effects are built of herky-jerk fragments. The whole thing could fall apart at any moment.

When Bad Livers do give in to straight bluegrass, and Barnes indulges in effortless clusters of Scruggs picking, your ears may actually prick up. Other parts may too. This is what bluegrass sounded like -- too warm and fast and tight, too dizzily hospitable -- the first time you heard it. Redeeming that blessed, silly moment is but one minor pleasure among "Industry and Thrift's" many major accomplishments.

SALON | Feb. 16, 1999