Killingsworth

Author: Scott McCaughey.
Scott McCaughey is a man who has worn plenty of musical hats over the years, but he has a funny way of bringing his own personality to whatever project he's working on, even as his collaborators lend their distinct colors to the music. The eighth album from McCaughey's the Minus 5 is a fine example; for KILLINGSWORTH, McCaughey and his usual musical partner, Peter Buck, are joined by several members of the Decemberists, and when McCaughey's smart, slightly bent pop sensibilities meet Colin Meloy's arty grand-scale folk-rock, you get a curious but thoroughly compelling country rock album that sounds casual and epochal at once. McCaughey has brought a more somber set of tunes to this project than one might expect, and while there's an undercurrent of whimsy lurking in songs like "Vintage Violent," "Smoke On, Jerry," and "Scott Walker's Fault," the fiddles, steel guitar, and accordions that pepper the arrangements bring the sad side of these melodies to the surface.