*** The Makers

ROCK STAR GOD

(Sub Pop)

Having established themselves as a force to contend with in the trashy realm of grungy, guitar-powered garage punk over the past decade, Tacoma's Makers take a clever stab at something grander. A two-part (Knives, Needles, Bullets, Blood and How Hard Is Your Heart?), 16-track rock opera of sorts, Rock Star God opens with the voice of a narrator setting the scene: "Backstage at a small rock-and-roll venue somewhere in the Northwest of the United States . . . the curtain rises, a roaring noise is heard from the stage . . . a crowd of well-dressed mean and women have gathered for the ceremony . . ." A small rock venue with a curtain? A well-dressed audience? Apparently we're dealing with a spoof of some sort, though the jury's still out on whether it's meant to parody seminal high-concept rock projects like Ziggy Stardust and Tommy or more recent retro glam scams -- i.e., Major Manson's Mechanical Animals and the faux bio-pic Velvet Goldmine.

No matter, the disc is an entertaining throwback to rock's most self-indulgent era (the early '70s). More important, it's a cunning way for the Makers to sneak out of the garage-punk ghetto and -- with a wink wink here and a nudge nudge there -- engage in a little self-indulging of their own. Mick Ronson-esque guitar flourishes, Ray Manzarek-style organ work, riffs borrowed from familiar classics (The Doors' "Hello, I Love You," the Who's "Substitute"), and melodramatic power ballads replete with mellifluous string arrangements are some of the favored tools of the Makers' new trade. And singer Michael Shelley spends a good part of the disc sounding like Alice Cooper doing a very bad Bowie impersonation as he reels off zingers like "Eye for an eye/Tooth for a too/We were as sweet on your lips as a Baby Ruth." By the time the Makers do get around to unleashing the kind of fiendishly fast and furious garage-punk rocker they're famous for -- "Too Many F**kers (On the Street)" -- it's no longer clear whether they're pretending to be the band whose tale is told on Rock Star God (à la Urge Overkill) or are simply telling someone else's fictional story. Ultimately, though, Rock Star God works just fine either way.

-- Matt Ashare