Crush Sr.

Bigtime rock gods may go three or four years between albums, but you can’t keep indie-rockers out of the studio with a padlock. Recorded in Boston in the late ’80s and partly leaked out piecemeal on three 45s, The Clown Sessions documents a collaboration between guitarist/keyboardist Gary Waleik (ex-Big Dipper), bassist Bob Weston (between Volcano Suns and Shellac), drummer Bob Fay (a contributor to Sebadoh’s Smash Your Head on the Punk Rock, lately the leader of Deluxx) and vocalist Ron Ward, who was the drummer in the Blood Oranges and more recently the singer of Speedball Baby. Improvising scraggly rock matter with a lively sense of humor-“Corndog” leads Ward to paraphrase a cigarette slogan in the service of fowl; “Sweet Cheetah” (“she’s my little chiquita”) emerges from an unseeing, unknowing cover of “Public Image”; Weston’s introductory trumpeting on “Livin’ Like a Pimp” only adds to the track’s overall twisted fist of funk — Crush, Sr. wrestles The Clown Sessions to a draw between inspired slash’n’holler and noisy shit. Now ain’t that punk rock, baby?