Unforced Mastery Makes ‘Trip’ Worth the Wait

Trip the Spring has had seven years to be swayed by trends in the music business. After taking all that time to mull it over, the unheralded Fullerton band’s verdict on this long-awaited (if not much-awaited) debut CD is a forthright “to thine own weird self be true.”

“Trip the Spring” is your average, everyday weave of art-rock, folk-rock, funk-rock, blues-rock, hippie pastoral sensibilities, Celtic sea chanteys, heavy psychedelia, jazz and old-time vaudeville. It would have been distinctive and adventurous on the original, late-’60s-early-’70s art-rock scene presided over by such vintage style-blenders as Traffic and Jethro Tull; it’s even more so now. The striking thing is that these styles are judiciously arrayed to fit in pleasing forms; this is no scattered patchwork.

Although the music industry has ignored Trip, leaving it to its own devices and piggy bank for this very well-crafted CD, it’s not hard to imagine lots of the neo-hippie H.O.R.D.E. kids and fans of Radiohead’s recent art-rock revival gravitating to the band.

A series of lineup changes contributed to Trip’s long recording delay (the band previously was represented on CD by a handful of tracks on the 1994 “Homespun” compilation of Fullerton artists). But the talented core trio of singer-lyricist Kevin Dutton, his drumming brother, David, and lead guitarist John Kraus remains intact.

Trip the Spring seemed to be striving pretentiously when it emerged in 1991, but now it approaches its complex work with unforced mastery. Kevin Dutton’s high, stringy, declamatory voice is a theatrical, artsy but often humorous calling card; his sparse but visually evocative lyrics and the songs’ solid melodic refrains provide firm, substantive grounding for Trippy excursions.

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It’s hard not to smile when Dutton imagines a faithful pooch as his songwriting collaborator on “Dog,” or when the same song offers a sea chantey vocal combined with a funk groove. Other songs vent the frustrations of trying to create and get noticed or focus on the epiphanies and emotional tremors that strike during such everyday activities as fishing, sitting on the beach drinking beer or going on a drunken hike with a buddy.

“America’s King of the Homeland” offers a wry sketch of a buffalo in a snowstorm; the song’s springy, piano-led funk humorously comments on the ungainly creature’s appearance, and the lyrics and Dutton’s delivery bring a light touch to the pathos the buffalo evokes as an static relic of the American past. There’s plenty of intelligence at play here.

Kraus is at play here too, giving one of the strongest instrumental performances ever by an O.C. modern-rocker. Whether playing nimble, biting blues-rock or splashing on prog-rock-inspired textures, he’s like an artist with a brush--one who is at once a good, straightforward draftsman and a visionary, abstract modernist.

On “Hard to Find,” Trip the Spring shows it can play the pop game if it likes: The band comes on straight and crunchy, yielding what sounds like a rocked-up take on Neil Young’s wispy “Old Man.” Most of the rest will strike alt-rock-tuned ears as strange, but this is a commendable, long-aborning attempt to find a distinctive rock language while borrowing wisely from many vocabularies.

(Available from Sabertooth Records, P.O. Box 45, Fullerton, CA 92836 or [714] 664-5146).

* Trip the Spring plays tonight at La Vida Roadhouse, 6105 Carbon Canyon Road, Brea. 8:30. Free. (714) 996-0720.

Ratings range from * (poor) to **** (excellent), with three stars denoting a solid recommendation.