Pitchfork

In the early 90s, I sublet half a freezing room to the world's most earnest Man Is the Bastard fan. Since I didn't want his money, we set up a barter system: Every couple of weeks he handed over heavy bags of vegetables and various tofu products from the organic grocer where he worked. It functioned well for both of us: He got the food for cost and I ate at home instead of walking to the sketchy Chinese restaurant down the street. Moreover, we used his payment for meals that the entire household prepared together.

In retrospect, our method of reimbursement fit well with the politics of Man Is the Bastard, the sludgy Southern California noise-core band to which he so frequently stirred the pasta. And though a cramped NYC apartment makes me wary of reintroducing these idyllic arrangements into my current living situation, if he did wander back looking for some floor-space and a mattress, perhaps we could listen to The People at Large while we pureed our rosemary and chickpeas.

Now presenting mellower fare, Henry Barnes, the voluminously bearded mystic behind Claremont, California's Amps for Christ, played guitar and prepared organ in Man Is the Bastard before founding AFC in 1997. On his seventh album, the violence has been replaced with a few pinches of feedback and a whole lot of pretty sitar, wiry Fahey-esque plucking, gentle folk strums, ballads layered with crumbling distortion, and one instance of boom-box screamo. Behind the stylistic maturation, though, the political grumbles remain.

Despite the misleading tones of his gentle whispers, Barnes takes Bush to task for the war in Iraq, critiques America's soulless greed, and offers a less than idealized version of 9/11. Like any good punk, he also scrawls political manifestos-cum-poetry throughout the CD's liner notes: "Don't look now George but a big snake's got you by the toe/ This time it's Muhammad sayin let my people go." And because Barnes is unabashedly passionate about his Christianity, these "holy war" disses offer an extra resonance. Despite some proselytizing, like Sufjan Stevens or The Danielson Famile, Barnes doesn't come off pushy or self-righteous; rather, he just seems really confident and calm.

Wisely escaping the overwroughtness of a ham-fisted Propaghandi screamathon, Amps for Christ let the music do most of the pontificating. While "AFC Tower Song" is fairly explicit in its subject matter, when Tara Tikitavi sings "Prince Charlie Stuart," a traditional Scottish ballad popularized by Steeleye Span, there's a less obvious sense of the political couched in her anachronistic harmonizing of the Bonnie Prince's exile in Spain. Placing interpretation squarely in the hands of the listener, the apocalyptic "Firecube" pumps out chirpy KK Null noise, while the blissful "Freddie the Mockingbird" is just chirpy.

Perhaps mirroring the vast populism of its title, The People at Large has the charm of an overstuffed antique jukebox stuck between 45s: I hear Iran fronting the Sun City Girls, Captain Beefheart collaborating with Merzbow, the old Shrimper band Goosewind trying some Appalachia. The laid-back spoken poetry of "Bug" hits like the "fast and bulbous" intro to "Pachuco Cadaver" on Trout Mask Replica. "Banjo Hymn" breaks hearts with its lovely sustain and eventual hoedown. The stately minuet "Midianite Prelude" reminds me of the opening to an episode of Masterpiece Theater, though I've never actually watched the show.

This breadth is impressive (the record's twenty-three songs equals the track count of 2002's The Oak in the Ashes), but the continual shift between styles also highlights weaknesses. For instance, the overstated "Memmorial Immemorial (Revisited)" and its ponderous soloing, left me yearning for the clean lines of an endless sitar, hinted at wonderfully on "Tarsit" and "Claremont Raga". Still, Barnes continues to forge an engaging hodgepodge of musical/political/spiritual obsessions, and whatever the eventual pitfalls of this patchy eclecticism, finding a form within these shambles is an enjoyable task.