Scott Biram – Graveyard Shift

Scott Biram is a really scary dude. Your seventh-grader will be all over that grossly dead dog on the cover, but the contents might give the kid nightmares.

Life as Biram sings it is nothing but trouble: “The trouble with livin’ is you gotta get ‘er done.” That line is from “Goin’ Home”, a breathless romp through murder and mayhem. In “Work”, he wonders how long he must live through “fever, decay, rotting away” trying to put food on the table. A trucking job is an endless “black ribbon” wound through diners, titty bars and roadkill. Love is a terminal tear at the heart by the devil’s long fingernail.

All this and you can dance to it! The indelible magic of Biram’s music is its vivid, manic energy. He’s a one-man band afire, making noise to fill the universe with his anguish, yet the songs jump to beat all. Their sum is ultimately an uplifting assault against the ignominies of getting by.

Some of them are even beautiful. Biram’s wracked vocals are gifted with country phrasing, and in a foreign language, “Santa Fe”, a love song about a cokehead psycho, would be flat out pretty. “Lost Case Of Being Found” is a pending classic, channeling Lowell George via Dylan’s “You Ain’t Goin’ Nowhere”.

Biram often processes his vocals for dramatic effect, especially on “Church Babies”, a speed-metal-like, satiric rant against organized religion that closes the set in a parody of traditional country’s set-closing hymns. End times, indeed.