Drazy Hoops

Drazy Hoops may have nicked his name from a Captain Beefheart lyric off “The Blimp” (Trout Mask Replica), but he looks more like Kurt Cobain than a big catfish and, at times, sounds a lot like Basehead’s Michael Ivey fronting the Folk Implosion, at others like a much more intelligent Eddie Vedder with a better-enunciated yarl. Hoops’ half-asleep vocals wake up and emerge from thickets of guitars, artfully arranged to achieve that slightly ragged but elegiac interplay you find on old Neil Young sides. But he can rock, too; check out the (Eno-era) Roxy-style maelstrom he and his buds whip up at the end of “Such a Cruel Design.” He’s also a pretty damned good songwriter, who can range from empty-tank countrified ballads (“Soul Like the Sun”) to whispered apocalyptic ruminations (“There Must Be More Than This”) to fine chamber pop (“The Moon Lies … ”). The best mature rock record I’ve heard in a while.