With The Lean Years Tradition, Model Engine manages to maintain a perfect blend of poetic lyricism and pop appeal with their powerful playing.  No mean feat.  I've said it before, and I'll say it again:  They play modern rock and roll like a battered old Fifties, pickup truck tooling down the highway at top speed with chicken coops rattling around in the bed.  There is an appealing sense of reckless danger that their songs just might run off the road or fall apart at any given moment.  Their brash, noisy art pop with retro-progressive underpinnings swathed in a Nineties sensibility is nearly peerless.  If you haven't heard their previous albums under the Black Eyed Sceva moniker, just pick this one up instead--or even if you have heard those!  Get them all now! 

The Lean Years Tradition shows growth, both in their trademark style and overall performance.  It's tighter and more focused--not to mention notably balanced lyrically, managing to be both literate and intelligent while also being accessible.  Brooding yet hopeful.  Poetic yet visceral.  Theological yet relevant.  (Furthermore, they use uncommon words not readily found on your average pop album: reticent; suture; Pavlovian; halcyon; savoir-faire; genuflect.) 

The themes are equally diverse, focusing on prostitution and pornography as well as persecution and the price of faith.  The result is a surprisingly rare symmetry that provokes thought, encourages action, and excites the imagination--as well as offering some pleasant poetry: 

         I've been hanging ‘round your windmills 
         Making mountains out of molehills 
         Where are you Rosinante? 
         I'm paper mache in the potter's clay 
         I spend all my days coming out of shape. 
                           ("Rosinante") 

Of course, the lyric sheet will help you decipher some of the more muted vocals, and in no time, you'll be singing along heartily. 

Model Engine is not just a mere band of buddies, but a talented group of young music-making artists.  Add this band to the list of emotionally resonating, cerebrally encouraging, and faith inspiring bands like Adam Again, Over the Rhine, and Vigilantes of Love.  They may not have been around as long as those others, but their careful craftsmanship makes them worthy of inclusion on such an impressive list.  Besides, they are creating exactly what more Christians should be doing:  something smart, relevant, and singularly distinctive. 

By Steven Stuart Baldwin 

(For more about Model Engine, see our concert review and our feature article.) 

The Lean Years Tradition is a progress report on Five Minute Walk Records' premier band's dues-paying journey. "Hang You Upside Down" sums up the reward for all this hard work: "Underneath the weight of everything we're turning black coals into diamonds and we're sifting through the remains and picking out the pearls when we find them." Those pearls include being "Scarred but Smarter," thanks to relationship-inflicted wounds; discovering the horrors of night life on a German street called "Reeperbahn;" and the healing and reconciliation a "Suture" can offer. Lyricist and lead singer Jeremy Post is cautionary about the power of creativity in "Encore": "Sometimes the pen cuts deeper than the sword and what's been repressed comes back for an encore." This revelatory ability is especially evident in the disturbing psychological explorations of  "Anonymous F."  

The writing on this CD is so compelling that it's really a poetry slam, but the auditory assault of this modern rock band is as strong as ever. John Askew and producer Bruce Winter join the trio in the studio for extra guitar and vocal oomph while new drummer, Erick Herzog reinforces the rhythmic foundation. The result is the same as the live sound the trio cranks out in concert. 

"Weathervanes" hints at an explanation for the name and personnel changes that recently transformed Black Eyed Sceva into Model Engine. "A black-eyed bruise/ a severed connection/ the fire that burned the bridge was born of constant friction/ whittled down and ground to dust/ the link between the two extremes was given up for lost. We three weathervanes are feeling the winds to different degrees." Model Engine still catches enough of that wind to keep their tradition of thoughtful, quality rock alive. 

By Linda T. Stonehocker