Jukebox Junkies: Choose Your Fix

“I like to call it Alt Country Pop Rock”, says lead Jukebox Junkie Marc Dauer of his band’s music. That’s a pretty good assessment, indeed, and Choose Your Fix is quite possibly the greatest album Wilco never recorded. But even as Dauer cites those alt-country-pop darlings as a definite influence, the Jukebox Junkies seem to have a firm grasp in what makes joyous music truly joyous. Where Wilco and Jeff Tweedy are often wont to trip along the frayed lines of pop perfection and hazy late night bar room sobriety, Dauer leads his group through a set of eleven great songs on Choose Your Fix that are simply amazingly feel good. And not in any cheesy sort of way. If you find a smile not forming on your face within the time it takes to listen to “Sentimental Tattoo” and “Over and Over”, the first two songs on the album, then perhaps the good groove here is not for you.

Dauer formerly fronted the band Five Easy Pieces, whose MCA debut in 1998 found a lot of fans but little marketing push as the label was going through the bad times of corporate restructuring, and, well, great music often gets pushed aside in favor of shit that will sell in those instances. But why the hell the labels don’t believe in bands like Dauer’s is still hard to comprehend at times. Do they think audiences are stupid and can’t tell what is and isn’t good? There is a larger contingency of music fans out there who don’t need Carson Daly to hold them by their hands when they go to the music stores, believe it or not.

So Marc split with MCA and took it upon himself to form the great Jukebox Junkies, featuring Dauer playing guitars and singing, Zak Schaefer on bass, Darren Tehrani on guitar, and Blair Sinta on drums. Doing it his way allowed Dauer to create an album he liked very much. “I got the opportunity to make the album I wanted, for less than the food budget on my last album”, noted Marc dryly. But the results speak for themselves.

In the wry “Wish”, Dauer paints the portraits of various characters, culminating in a classic send-up: “I stepped in to the coffee shop, got myself a slice of apple pie / Waitress blinked me in the eye, ended up with her apron on / She took my place triumphantly, now she’s top ten on MTV / Wonder if she wishes she were here with me”. The Junkies manage to create dreamy pop out of more wistful tunes as well. The finest examples of this are in the pretty and yearning “Reason To Believe” and the slow, aching “Wrecking Ball” that finds Dauer pointedly singing “Misplaced aggression, misdirected in every direction you happen to be in / Path of least resistance, ain’t what it’s cut out to be / Keep your distance / Get out of the way”.

Then there’s the glorious fever rock of “Undertow” and the charging rush of “Uptown Train” complete with bells, great vocal harmonies, and just the right touch of twang in the guitars. For all the people who are clamoring over Wilco’s oft-bootlegged and soon to be finally set free Yankee Hotel Foxtrot, they might also care to bend an ear to Dauer on Choose Your Fix‘s “Seven On The Line” that finds the Junkies doing their best Tweedy-influenced boogie. How could you miss with lines like “Two dollars and a pack of smokes / Twenty bucks just to get you home / Double down, seven on the line / We’ve been waiting a long, long time”? Son of “Casino Queen”? How about better than “Casino Queen”.

From the pedal steel /accordion / banjo / brushed drum groove of “Nothing Gets Me Down” to the odd-as-hell Casiotone drum track-backed closing “Anything”, Choose Your Fix covers all the bases and then some. Beatlesque harmonies, indelible melodies, excellent lyrics, drawling guitars, and a whole lot of genuine surprises are to be heard on this album. The Jukebox Junkies should indeed stick around a while. It’s hard to imagine hearing any better version of Marc Dauer’s brand of music coming out any time soon. And yes, that even includes the fabled Mr. Tweedy’s larger than life efforts.