Grant Hart: The Argument

If you're going to make a concept album, you may as well do it in style. For Grant Hart, that means adapting Milton's Paradise Lost into a musical odyssey spanning 20 songs while apparently echoing his own relationship with William S Burroughs. There's no denying that the former Hüsker Dü man's fourth solo album is tough going at times, incorporating marching drum rolls with ragged Stooges punk riffs and glammed-up 1960s psychedelia with a devil- may-care abandon. There are several drab missteps (Isn't Love, Glorious) but cacophonous instrumental War in Heaven and Underneath the Apple Tree keep the subject matter anchored when it seems at risk of diversion and/or implosion. The Argument may require an investment of time, but Hart succeeds in keeping his ambitious project musically interesting throughout. granthart.com
Download: Awake, Arise!, Letting Me Out