Love As Laughter: Holy

Like some

indie-rock Adam Sandler, Isaac Brock loves to toss bones to his pals. One of

them, Love As Laughter honcho Sam Jayne, has been a huge influence on Brock

since Modest Mouse was a new band in the shadow of Jayne's sadly unsung Lync.

Since then, though, Brock has soared while Jayne has ambled along, making

fair-to-amazing LAL albums for Sub Pop to little fanfare—which is why

Brock released the band's new full-length, Holy, on his own Epic imprint, Glacial

Pace. The disc's production is tidy by LAL standards, but other than that, Holy

is another reliable

blast of Jayne's ostensibly lazy, bread-and-butter indie-rock. On "Crosseyed

Beautiful Youngunz"—a wandering song with the lowest note-count of any

jam in recent memory—Jayne floats like a butterfly on pot smoke, while

the Brock-assisted "Paul Revere" is a dark, stinging track that gives messy

birth to a bloody chorus. "Kenny And Jim" comes closest to LAL's

zenith—namely its 2001 album Sea To Shining Sea—by deconstructing early-'70s

Stones and Neil

Young with deadpan relish. To use another analogy: Jayne is the Joe Walsh of

the indie set, a second-string vet whose low-key quirks and soulful

idiosyncrasy keeps him from superstardom (and even his deserved status as a

pioneer). But that's cool; on Holy, instead of aiming for coattails or sympathy, Jayne just

rolls up his sleeves and rocks on.