Head Off

Moris Tepper took seven years between the release of his first solo album, Big Enough to Disappear in 1996, and his second, Moth to Mouth, in 2003. Head Off, his third, follows after only one year. It is in some ways very different from the sprawling, eclectic Moth to Mouth, an hour-plus smorgasbord of two-dozen disparate tracks, many of them seemingly unfinished. Tepper occasionally gives Head Off an unfinished quality, too, for instance, tacking a seemingly irrelevant piece of music onto the end of a track, but for the most part, this is a more polished effort, and a more modest one, with 12 tracks taking up less than 35 minutes. For a while, it seems as though those tracks will be devoted to hard rock, beginning with "Bag of Nails" and continuing through the folk-rock title song to "Ricochet Man" (co-written by Tepper's old employer Captain Beefheart). But when the track list gets to "Mrs. Bodeen," Tepper typically takes a left turn, presenting a Western ballad with an acoustic guitar and singing it in his Johnny Cash voice. (He has a lot of different voices, sometimes it seems like a different one for every song.) Later, harsh rockers like "I'm the One" and "Sourpuss" are reminiscent of the White Stripes, who, of course, Tepper pre-dates. "The Sky Was Grey" goes back to country/folk with Tepper singing in his wheezy Bob Dylan/Tom Petty tenor. (Does the guy smoke a pack of cigarettes before doing this sort of vocal?) It may sound like this is an artist who refuses to stick to any one style, but in fact, Head Off is a far more consistent work than its predecessor, in more ways than one.