As any jazz musician will tell you, free jazz improvisation is the most difficult form of music because everyone in the band is essentially soloing at the same time--there is no rhythm section, no refrain, no consistent melody, and rarely any harmony possible in such a structure (with the notable exception of Don Cherry when he played with Ornette Coleman). Even bop, which preceded it, perplexed the previous generation of jazz musicians. Harry James once said after the first and only time he saw a bop concert that the musicians started together and ended together but everything that happened in between was a mystery to him. But even free jazz never attempted what Lucid Nation attempts with "Suburban Legends"--i.e., successfully simultaneously improvising both music and lyrics.

This is apparently a 5-member version of the band (drums, two guitars, bass, and vocal). One of its strongest cuts ("Punkophony") opens the CD with a shouted "Hallelujah" and ends with a slightly bemused "Oh my God!" In between it's a holy declaration of independence from Tamra including the memorable lines (after a series of screeches) "I'm sorry; that wasn't feminine at all" (Julian Casablanca of the Strokes is obviously a fan, having stolen this passage for the opening of their best song "New York City Cops," never released in the U.S.).

This declaration of values continues with "Girl Band," which communicates its message often strictly in the timbre of Tamra's voice and thus never becomes strictly self-referential. What follows--an anti-tourism non-commercial for "Las Vegas"--has a satiric edge very similarm, but superior, to Frank Zappa's. I was also seriously impressed by the shimmering sonic texture the drummer is able to accomplish in one passage solely through the expert control of her cymbals.

"Hypervigilant" is the smartest (and spookiest) song on the CD--a truly frightening monologue on what it's like to wake up in the middle of the night, listening so hard that even silence has its own sound--a sound strikingly similar to Edgar Allan Poe's "Telltale Heart." "Hometown" is another anti-commercial, this time for L.A. (from a woman whose e-mail tag is "NativeAngelena").

"Climb" is probably my favorite track for the way it slowly comes into focus. Somewhere around the 3-minute mark everything coalesces into a very moving and powerful forward motion that carries it to the end. Then the anti-commercials continue with "Commercial" about how marketing surreptiously takes over the creative space of our brains--a function Tamra desperately wants to wrest free for other uses.

"Vampire" takes us into a very interesting Hall of Mirrors--at first the qualities of the vampire are enumerated--not the kind we find in Anne Rice novels but rather the ones we meet at parties--the ones William Burroughs warned us against; the ones whom, he said, leave you feeling as if you're down a quart of blood. But Tamra goes way beyond even Burroughs--here her monologue mutates from describing the vampiric qualities in others to her recognizing those same qualities in herself.

Altogether, this is a majestic accomplishment for this quintet--a major statement not only in conception but also in execution. A raver.