After 2020’s sprawling and experimental five-track effort The Universe Inside, with songs ranging in length from 7 to 20 minutes, the new album is a return to form. Yet Ultraviolet Battle Hymns and True Confessions still manages to range far and wide, as if instead of shifting styles from one album to the next, singer Steve Wynn and his bandmates—now officially including keyboardist Chris Cacavas, formerly of ’80s Paisley Underground peers Green on Red—figured they might as well work all of them into a single release. Opening track “Where I’ll Stand” starts with loops of skittering synths, then pivots into big, overdriven guitars that build throughout the song until they become almost monolithic by the end. A couple tracks later, “Beyond Control” projects a sense of foreboding as Wynn intones enigmatic lyrics—“I’m a walking coming attraction / I don’t give a single thing away,” he begins—over the dark chiming of hollow percussion instruments that sound like they’re being played in the wrong order, as a wash of guitars ebbs and flows in the background.
All these years later, there’s no mistaking the Velvet Underground influence of “Hard to Say Goodbye,” where Wynn’s lyrics have a laconic Lou Reed cadence, though the musical accompaniment has a lusher feel, with swirls of woozy guitar. Later, “Lesson Number One” is a hard-charging rocker that shows all the benefits of teaming again with producer John Agnello (The Hold Steady, Dinosaur Jr.). Full of bracing guitars and a driving beat, the song folds in off-kilter violin licks without batting an eye.
The Dream Syndicate’s willingness to roam freely through different sounds has always been of the band’s strongest assets, outweighed only by their ability to make the transitions seem effortless. If the results have tended over the years to confound listeners who wanted more stuff like the previous stuff, maybe Ultraviolet Battle Hymns and True Confessions represents a kind of truce: The band’s various approaches to these 10 songs mean there’s something here for any Dream Syndicate fan.
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