Artist:     Chris Maxwell

Album:     New Store No. 2

Label:     Max Recordings

Release Date:     3.15.20

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Welding together experimental junk-rock sculptures out of a messy garage full of industrial noise, strident funk and buzz saws of cutting, angular guitars, New York’s Skeleton Key somehow unlocked the secret to making weird, arty music undeniably catchy and interesting. Some of the material was fancifully bizarre, some of it was shockingly savage, and the obsolete instrumentation and gear they used only served to spark their wild imaginations.

An original member, Chris Maxwell was in on their crazy schemes for a time, gleefully piling on inventive, unpredictably brilliant guitar designs that fit perfectly with Skeleton Key’s skewed pop sensibilities on two EPs and their 1997 major-label debut, Fantastic Spikes Through Balloon, which earned a Grammy Award nomination. The Arkansas native, who once moved in the same circles as Alex Chilton and Tav Falco and The Panther Burns and used to front Little Rock’s The Gunbunnies, has mellowed considerably, with 2016’s bucolic Arkansas Summer a haunting, and occasionally harrowing, slice of Americana with swells of pop symphonies that allowed Maxwell to unburden his soul and seek salvation wherever he could find it. New Store No. 2 gracefully dares to go further afield, but not too far, while navigating similar emotional minefields.

Substance abuse is one of the trickiest to walk through, as the serene jazz/soul fusion of a slow-moving “Walking Through the Water” gently echoes Steely Dan and wistfully wraps a tale of addiction and its damaging fallout in warm horns, a soft electric keyboard sprinkling and a cleverly drawn trail of slightly fuzzy guitar. And then there’s the affecting piano ballad “Cause and Effect.” Accompanied by meditative acoustic guitar picking and brushstrokes of pedal steel, it recounts a painful memory of a fatal car crash from Maxwell’s youth with such visceral poetry that it feels as if it’s happening to him all over again.

More uplifting, the title track opens with rich doo-wop vocals and slides into a slinky, R&B tribute to the American Dream realized by Maxwell’s Lebanese grandfather, K.J. Jemell, while Maxwell’s baroque-pop ambitions let out a big string-laden sigh in “Eloise” and “The Song Turns Blue” exhibits enough folky pop sophistication to get a smile from Wilco’s Summerteeth, as does the airy and refined “Birdhouse.” Very different from his TV music work with the Elegant Too production team, Maxwell’s Arkansas Summer and New Store No. 2 are more personal and revealing, showcasing wondrously diverse and complex arranging and songwriting brilliance. Those qualities are rare and special. Lessons learned from Burt Bacharach appear often on New Store No. 2, emerging sleepily from every lonely trumpet gasp and every softly struck piano chord or tenderly plucked string of “Jack Lee’s Dead,” although the rising and falling power-pop dynamics of “Dear Songwriter” are more reminiscent of The Posies’ swoons and crunches. And when the burlesque sleaze of “Most of What I Know I Learned from Women” takes the stage, it lets everyone know that Maxwell hasn’t lost any of his edge.

—Peter Lindblad