Billy Dolan: Do_Ist

Outside of a stint in the post-Sunny Day Real Estate group Fire Theft, guitarist Billy Dolan has been MIA since 1999, when his band 5ive Style released its final album, Miniature Portraits. Apparently Dolan's been stockpiling creative energy since, because his self-released, self-promoted solo debut Do_Ist overflows in all the right ways, with genre- and culture-crossed experimentation. Backed by Tortoise/5ive Style drummer John Herndon and Isotope 217° bassist Matt Lux—also his sidemen in the '90s punk-funk unit Heroic Doses—Dolan channels jazz fusion, African pop, Meters-style funk, Hendrix-esque acid rock, and Dead-inspired jams through the fretboard of a punk lifer, emerging with a hybrid that's at once gritty and perfectly executed, surprising and warmly familiar.