“Post Bone Savvy,” the lead single from the Right Offs’ Bardo, starts with a classic rock strut, gritty and bluesy, but with a slight rhythmic hiccup at the end. That hiccup is, in a sense, the key to the song. It’s one dropped breath that lets you know that this was a riff written by musicians who have already heard and loved a thousand other guitar riffs. They still love rock ‘n’ roll. But they’re also finding ways to make music that isn’t quite like anyone else’s.
The same sensibility shows up in the poetically accessible lyrics. “It’s so ugly,” croons singer Maxwell Omer, “staying in the one place / given my painted lie of mine / you were leaving / taking all the pillows out of your life / love in a dungeon is still / love in a dungeon is still love.”
The combination of visceral playing, emotional singing, and smart songwriting is all over Bardo, the new album from the New Haven-based Right Offs that shows that the pandemic hasn’t slowed the band down. If anything, the trio — Maxwell Omer on vocals and guitar, Than Rolnick on bass, and Bob Rock, a.k.a. Robert Breychak — sounds tighter than ever, their songcraft sharper, their sound just that more expansive, reaching back to the early history of rock ‘n’ roll to make music that sounds fresh for 2020.
The album starts with “Bullets Don’t Lie,” a song that starts off quietly enough to let people know that Omer, first off, can really sing. On the first line, “bullets don’t lie,” he lets that last word trail off into space, then grounds his voice again to finish the thought. And the first lines are just a preamble for a song that unfolds into a rollicking anthem, Omer’s voice strong and precise as Rolnick and Brechak drive the song to the horizon.
From there, the musicians in the Rights Off proceed to explore just how much they can mix up the formula while staying true to their sound. “Roses Cut From Black” is built from angular verses that open up into raging choruses. “Daylight” rolls along on a heavy shuffle. And then “Always Room for You” is the kind of song you could slow-dance to even after you’ve graduated.
“Dead Man” moves from Western soundtrack to a tambourine hip-shaker over the course of its six minutes. After the trickiness of “Post Bone Savvy,” “Parlor Tricks” also proves the Rights Offs haven’t forgotten how to tear through a straight-ahead rocker. And “Sometimes Friends Are Near” lets the album close out on the band’s version an old-school R&B sway.
A bardo, in Buddhism, refers to a state of existence between death and rebirth, a fitting a description for the limbo-like time we’re currently living in. But there’s nothing static about the album itself. If the bardo’s where we are now, the Right Offs, with a potent mix of grit and heart, are helping show us the way out.
Bardo is available on Bandcamp.