Lying in States - Wildfire On the Lake

There’s a simple rule about independent punk—if you demonstrate that you can do more than rage against the whatever, feel free to get your screech on. Lying in States, with their second album, Wildfire on the Lake, has only one frustratingly aggressive piece (“Both Sides”), but cushioned as it is by such accurately disconnected instrumentals, even this track merits multiple plays. Of course, there are plenty of better songs—most of them rock ballads—and decent transitory pieces that are fine stuck between rock and punk, like “Qg,” which may have hard and heady guitar but also has the soothing and somewhat ambiguous maracas. There’s even a merited pop-like hit, “Turn,” which is catchy, deft, and filled with an uplifting and playful clarity: “I hate the thought/That what you are I’m not/But I’ll do my best to pass your test/If you’re sure I’m what you want.” I wish I could say all of the tracks made such progress, but there are a couple of mid-album duds, “Manis” and “Hackles,” that both fail for the opposite reasons, which leaves one thinking that if the two were combined, they’d make a killer track. But it’s all about balance, which is why they can have the submerged lyrics and endurance-heavy picking of “Wired Saint” right beside the vintage “Uphill Battle,” a song that all but backpedals into a jauntier time: “And it’s a downhill slide/Tonight/Now I’m doing much better/I think I’ll be just fine/There are lots of things I could tell you/But I can’t seem to find/The words I’m looking for.” The way these lyrics spread across verses seems almost like hip-hop, but in the context of middle-of-the-road rock, it’s not showing off so much as it is wringing every ounce of angst from the text. Wildfire on the Lake feels like an exercise in square dancing: Every track is one step forward, one step back. Then again, when you go above and beyond catering to your audience like this, you don’t need to step outside the box; you just need to stay quick on your feet within it. [www.lyinginstates.com]