BLOWIN' INDIE WIND Lucero Nobody's Darlings

Author: Benjamin Golze

Not to be confused with the Mexican pop star of the same name, Lucero is a Southern rock band from Memphis, Tenn. Though the band itself has never been punk, Lucero's members all milled around in the Memphis punk rock scene before taking a quieter, alt-country route that dominated their 2001 self-titled debut. Lucero radically overhauled its image the next year on Tennessee, which featured a raw southern rock sound, and they subsequently tightened up their style on 2003's That Much Further West.

For their fourth album, Nobody's Darlings, the group brought in famed Memphis producer Jim Dickinson, who streamlined Lucero's sound. The change had its ups and downs, but gratefully, mostly ups. Gone are the big, heavy hooks from the band's earlier work, especially Tennessee. Nobody's Darlings is faster, better, stronger rock and roll from start to finish, and each song drives with freight train intensity.

Everything kicks into gear in the album's opener "Watch It Burn." The highlight of the band has always been frontman Ben Nichols, and his gritty, gravelly vocals are in full effect as he belts out "Gonna watch it all burn tonight...all right." It seems the first song features as many "uh-huh's" and "yeah all right's" as regular lyrics, which perfectly complements the more slurred, drunken tone that Nichols has affected on Nobody's Darlings.

The best songs occur when Nichols' vocals complement Roy Berry's fervent drumming. In "And We Fell," Berry's beats rise, fall and roll behind Nichols' mournful recounting of a lost love, while the two drive each other to a breathless tempo on "Bikeriders," one of the best songs on the album. The rest of Nobody's Darlings runs the full bar band gamut, from slow dancing at the end of the night on "All the Same to Me" to throwing someone through the front window in the rollicking "Last Night in Town."

Nobody's Darlings stumbles only once, as Lucero incorporates an old style of song into their streamlined sound in "Noon as Dark as Night." Nichols briefly groans about heartache before the guitars segue into a Skynard-esque solo. The song recalls "Here at the Starlite" from their sophomore album, but even at that early point in Lucero's musical development the heavy guitar sections were roped in by Nichols' voice. Sadly, standing alone here, they just sound out of place.

Fortunately, the other time that Lucero breaks from their bar band sound is a success, albeit an unpolished one. Nichols flexes his songwriting chops in "The War" when he and his lonely acoustic guitar patiently recount the tale of his grandfather's experience in World War II. The song, six minutes long, presents a stark picture of someone idolized as a hero who is in turn plagued by guilt and regret.

Like many indie bands, Lucero has toured relentlessly, and the complexities arising from boozing, the road and playing music pervade the album. In the slow-dance tune "Hold Me Close," Nichols sings about being "drunk by noon on New Year's Day / On the hills outside of town someplace / With the smoke and the wine, stranger's eyes."

The best summary of the band, however, is "Nobody's Darlings,"when Nichols attempts to paint a portrait of the band's hard-won, yet still fledgling, success. "We ain't nobody's darlings / We never should have made it this far," he sings while the guitars sway and Berry's snare slides and clicks along quietly in the background. Lucero sounds like a band that has played to empty bars and half-listening crowds, yet couldn't care less as long as they can play to just one fan. As Nichols drawls on the album's title track, he's "happy just watching her dance."