Flesh and Spirits

The Gena Rowlands Band really isn't so much a band as it is a pickup group periodically organized by singer/songwriter Bob Massey, a veteran of the Washington, DC punk scene whose songs are lyrically fraught, carefully arranged, and strangely beautiful. The songs on Flesh and Spirits offer an unusual mixture of wry humor and emotional nakedness; Massey is one of a very small handful of songwriters capable of singing about God in any kind of nuanced way. Where most of his colleagues crowd the two ends of the spectrum — aggressive atheism or born-again fervor — Massey actually sings about faith: belief and doubt and conflict and hope all mixed together. The result is music that benefits greatly from the philosophical tension that informs it, and his penchant for both multi-layered rhythms and skillfully organized strings makes his music as complex sonically as it is lyrically. Highlights include the brilliant "Love, For Want of a Lesser Word" (on which Fender Rhodes, piano, and an episodically jungly rhythm underlie a simple and beautiful sung melody), the equally lovely title track, and the gently heartbreaking "Joke I Play on Washington." The instrumental "Althea" is pretty, but its predictable rhythms and emotionally flat chord progression get old rather fast, and on "Hope,For Want of a Greater Word" the music sounds suspiciously like an excuse for the lyrics. Overall, though, this is a very impressive album.