Consumer Guide Album

MC5: Heavy Lifting [Ear Music, 2024]
This belated tribute to the sole hippie-era rock band to embrace the kind of radical politics that didn't begin to gain ideological sophistication and sectarian detail in the music until the punk era. Their leader is Wayne Kramer, who this past February died like the other four before him. But happy to climb aboard are such relatively sophisticated younger lefties as Tom Morello and Vernon Reid. Where the original 5 projected freewheeling excitement, this incarnation showcases dread in a bunch of new songs that make up for the loss of "Ramblin' Rose" and "Kick Out the Jams" with the likes of "Blind Eye" ("I see no hunger/I see no fear/I turn a blind eye/With a blind eye it disappears" and "Barbarians at the Gate" ("They're running up the steps/Blood coming out of their eyes/With the truth left behind/Comedy of thievery/In a red white and blue disguise/Smell of treachery/False battle cry." Just in time—we hope. A-