Dave Alvin

The title track of Dave Alvin’s new CD celebrates the joys that were to be found at the Ashgrove, L.A.’s fabled folk/blues club where he and his brother Phil soaked up the musical influences that prompted them 25 years ago to form the roots rocking Blasters. The 10 songs here range from such quiet acoustic fare as the emotive “The Man in the Bed” (about his dad’s dying of Parkinson’s disease) and “Everett Reuss” (a Jeremiah Johnson-type who fled civilization for the mountains) to more blazing items like the rhythmic “Out of Control” (about a guy waiting outside a motel while his baby turns a trick, who has “some 9 millimeter muscle in case things go too far. … I try to take it easy, man; go with the flow. But sometimes things get a little bit out of control.”) and the keening steel guitar-fueled “Black Haired Girl” (who resembles a lost love). Alvin’s a great storyteller (more than a singer), and this disc shows the breadth of his interests. They really deliver the goods here; now go pick ’em up!