The thrill of Lydia Loveless’s coming of musical age, 2013’s “Boy Crazy” is the way it seems to emerge from her past career and take her somewhere else: the sound is everything rock and roll, it sounds so good that your ears tingle with pleasure, the guitars straddling a riff worthy of all the top rock bands of the late 1970s, not punk or post punk, that all american area in between where Tom Petty damned the torpedoes. It’s like an American dream of rock and roll which is so difficult to do today.
The band grab the riff and repeat repeat repeat and the riff is like a melodic lick and then towards the end at the coda, one of the guitars peels itself off for a rock and roll, but not metal, not Hendrix, but rock guitar solo. The song itself is somewhere between sex crazy and self recrimination, it is a song of sexual desire, “when he lifts up his arms it makes me so wet” and also of defense “I can’t help it if I’m boy crazy”. An answer song to her own “Crazy”, “Crazy” is a country strum song of romantic desire and “Boy Crazy” takes it away from the specific into a generalized desire.
And “Boy Crazy” is more than an album away from “Crazy”, her current album of the year contender Somewhere Else was actually recorded before “Boy Crazy” and it kinda sounds it. This jingle jangle rocker is the perfect complement to Somewhere Else, its equal and its exemplifier: “I don’t want to hurt my baby” is the apology on the tag end.
Of course, this is an act of sorts much the way Elvis Costello was an act of sorts (and Liz Phair? Not so much), but so much the better because I can’t help it if I’m Lydia crazy.
Grade: A
