If last year’s Windbreakers anthology, Time Machine 1982-2002, made you remember a great band, this terrific solo effort from founding member Tim Lee should tattoo his talents into your memory for good. No Discretion takes Lee’s patented power-pop prowess, mixes it with rootsy elements, nods at punk and psychedelic influences, and all the while rocks right along.
Lee recorded the album’s thirteen tracks over a year and a half from North Carolina to Mississippi with several producers, including Mitch Easter and Don Coffey Jr., but you’d be hard-pressed to find problems with cohesion. Lee is a skilled lyricist and storyteller; his deceptively simple turns of phrase bring to life the small-time characters who populate songs such as “New Hope”, “Things Get Broken” and “Speak Up Girl”.
The raucous blue-collar call-to-arms “Keep Me Down” is hard to resist when it instructs, “Take your television set and throw it out the window/Take the rum and the ice and throw it in the blender.” The fuzzy fun of “I Wanna Believe” nicely kicks off the album, and “Across The Tracks” earns a spot on my all-time list of can’t-wait-to-leave-this-damn-rotten-town anthems. No Discretion finds a veteran artist still making quality music that you can be proud to turn up loud.
