Luce lips take trips

Neil Lucey makes a solo run for the cerebral border

By John O'Neill

Shit-faced, 3 a.m. -- perhaps not the best time to attempt to wrestle with yourself over the bigger meaning of the disc spinning in the player, but nonetheless there I was -- beer-breathed,

whiskey-dicked, and looking to mentally grab hold of anything to keep me from launching straight out of my chair into a low-grade orbit. Drink can lead you astray on many fronts -- mismatched fist fights, lopsided pool games, and coyote-ugly mornings are as common as Tylenol the next day -- not the least of which is flipping for a band who, in the harsh reality of the morning-after, are more likely mediocre than genius. And while I was mostly aware that I'd been at this juncture before, there was still that unshakable belief that there was indeed something special going on that the gods had allowed me to lock in on, if only till I sobered up. So when Neil Lucey's Buried in the Mix was played again the following afternoon (this time in the company of a witness), and turned out to be better than remembered from the previous evening, it was met with more than a sigh of relief, because now the issue had much greater implications. Turns out Buried in the Mix wasn't merely one of the year's more solid local stabs (though it will be lucky to appear on the radar of the city's more conventional taste-makers), it actually ranks as one of the most exciting and challenging listens since Pink Floyd's Syd Barrett melted down 30 years ago. Welcome to the world of Neil Lucey's brilliant afterthought.

"I took a four-track home to try to learn and sing better," says Lucey, who slings bass with local pop-rockers Thinner full-time. "When I couldn't sing the Thinner songs good enough, I started making up my own."

A teacher by profession, Lucey would fiddle away part of the afternoon spent babysitting his two children by recording random thoughts onto the four track recorder. With just a guitar, Lucey would set up in front of a cheap microphone, hit the record button, and spontaneously sing one- to two-minute snippets of song ideas. Sometimes he would overdub vocal effects, or add bass, or maybe fill a spot in with the kid's Radio Shack keyboard, but the concept behind the taping was to create an aural sketch pad. The good ideas would be fleshed out, and the bad ones would be deep-sixed. Realizing he'd need an objective ear to sift through the lo-fi mess, Lucey called local studio guru Roger Lavallee for an appointment at Tremolo Lounge.

"[Neil] said he had a ton of stuff that he really didn't think much of, but he wanted my opinion," Lavallee reflects. "So he shows up with these recordings and what I heard completely blew my mind. He was doing some of the most inspired and interesting stuff I had heard in a long time. I told him I didn't want to touch them. They were perfect as they were."

Built on the bedrock of solid pop song-writing, Buried in the Mix is more than the sum of its imperfect parts. Opening with the stark lament of "If I Were 70's," Lucey strips naked in front of the mirror and examines himself in song. Straddling the minimalist DMZ somewhere between the wide-eyed innocence of Jonathan Richman, the un-self-conscious solo work of Syd Barrett, and the fragmentary wonder of Guided by Voices, Lucey's pop noise is as bizarre as it is stirring. From the disinterested caterwaul of "Bee Sting," to the sublime simplicity of "Parachutes Can't Fly," he touches all the sonic bases in less than two minutes a song. "Monkey in My Head" is a near-perfect slice of Robyn Hitchcock-style psychedelia, while "Window Paine," "Ethan Allan" and "Manick," are understated, almost claustrophobic, streams-of-consciousness. Lucey ably riddles the constraints of pop convention over the course of 16 songs, in less than 23 minutes. It's evident that Lucey isn't "trying" to do anything so much as he is just doing "something." That it works as an album is thrilling. More to the point, it serves as a declaration that Neil Lucey -- lifetime loser at punk rock -- is actually an artist with unimaginable future potential.

Since the release of Buried in the Mix, Lucey and Lavallee have collaborated on four more discs, with enough material to round out a couple more after that. And while Lavallee is reluctant to offer any solid direction for fear of scaring off whatever muse has wrapped itself so thoroughly around Lucey, he expects a monthly get-together for work on a new batch of material.

"You know, I'm not sure how to encourage him," admits Lavallee. "But he shows up with another 20 tunes and I look forward to it every time. Sitting here as he plays the tracks is sorta like listening to this great underground radio station with all these great undiscovered tunes."

"The whole spontaneity thing is working for me," says Lucey of the song-writing magic. "And I might be lazy. That's why you can hear the kids and dog in the background. I'm just gonna press on and keep going with it. If the label thing works out, who knows? I have issues. I need something big and awesome to feed my mid-life crisis."

Buried in the Mix can be ordered through Thinner World Headquarters, 37 Burnhap Road, Sutton, MA 01590 or via e- mail at nlucey@hotmail.com.