**1/2 Matt Suggs

GOLDEN DAYS BEFORE THEY END

(Merge)

The defunct Butterglory were indie-rock loss leaders, a likable but hardly earthshaking band who filled out bills and Merge release schedules while tying Archers of Loaf in the competition for most comparisons to Pavement. Golden Days Before They End finds 'Glory guitarist Matt Suggs resurfacing sans drummer/songwriting partner Debby Vanderwall with a brace of songs that reach somewhat farther back into rock history for inspiration. Suggs has traded Malkmus for Dylan: there are clear melodic lifts from "Love Minus Zero/No Limit" and "I Pity the Poor Immigrant," and a wealth of references to bells, towers, and "Chinese drums" brings it all back home.

Fortunately, he puts the style to fairly comprehensible ends. Despite the exotic imagery ("Keep your tarts and your phantom queen"), "Kisses" and "She Kept Time to the Teardrops" are break-up songs that come off as rueful rather than bitter, given Suggs's weary vocal delivery. The music itself flirts with Basement Tapes looseness, with Suggs doubling on lap steel and mandolin and latter-day Butterglory member Ranjit Arab contributing a good deal of barroom piano. Elsewhere, drummer John Anderson backs the ghostly "Eloise" with late-Ringo fills, "Where's Your Patience, Dear" is a "Femme Fatale" rewrite, and the instrumentals "The Rambler Vs. the Vulture" and "Rambler's Ride" invent a new micro-genre: indie Celtic. Despite this spot-the-influence vibe, Golden Days is an honest -- even affecting -- piece of work, smartly focused on solid songs and arrangements that serve them admirably.

-- Franklin Bruno

(Matt Suggs opens for Damon & Naomi and Chris Colbourn this Wednesday, September 18, at the Middle East. Call 864-EAST.)