My Best Evil Friend

The paradox of Scott McCaughey is hes a great and valuable sideman, as hes shown on his projects with R.E.M., John Wesley Harding, the Jayhawks, Alejandro Escovedo, M. Ward, and many more. However, let him write the songs and suddenly the music becomes unquestionably his. The No Ones is supposed to be a collaboration between McCaughey, his best friend and R.E.M. boss Peter Buck, and Arne Kjelsrud Mathisen and Frode Stromstad of the Norwegian band I Was a King. However, McCaughey became the main songwriter for their second album, 2023s My Best Evil Friend, and in his hands it became a loose concept album about the music that had made a difference in his life, both past and present. McCaughey recalls a radio station he loved in his youth ("KLIV"), life-changing concerts ("One Night at the Fillmore"), friends and heroes whove passed on ("304 Molino Way" and "Phil Ochs Is Dead"), the idiosyncrasies of great, obscure singles ("Cameo Parkway"), and imagining the afterlife as a get-together following a big show ("The After Party"). The scrappy rock & roll edge of the first No Ones album, 2020s The Great Lost No Ones Album, has been turned down a bit, perhaps a consequence of most of this album being recorded with Mathisen and Stromstad in Oslo and McCaughey and Buck in Portland, Oregon, with files being passed back and forth. Most of these songs are midtempo guitar-fueled pop, evocative in their moody jangle and somehow playful and somber at the same time, more so than one might expect from the man whose work with the Young Fresh Fellows and the Minus 5 has been so full of wit. Despite being created in a virtual environment, Buck and Stromstad turn out to be a symbiotic guitar team, McCaughey on bass and Mathisen on drums are a tasteful rhythm section, and they had the good sense to get some friends to contribute to the project, including Norman Blake of Teenage Fanclub, Debbie Peterson of the Bangles, Victor Krummenacher of Camper Van Beethoven, and Ben Gibbard of Death Cab for Cutie. So is this a band album from the No Ones, or a Scott McCaughey LP with a lot of notable guest stars? In the long run, it hardly matters -- My Best Evil Friend is a great album informed by the love and power of music, made by people in thrall to its magic, and if youve ever liked anything by any of the participants, chances are excellent this is something youll enjoy. [My Best Evil Friend was released in two versions, 12 songs on CD and in digital formats, and 18 songs on a two-LP vinyl set.] ~ Mark Deming