North Circular

Though rooted in the late '60s, The Bevis Frond really started in the mid-'80s, when Nick Saloman released a steady stream of records and single-handedly led the charge of latter-day English psychedelia. Today, Saloman, now in his mid-40s, carries the freak rock flag with more authority than ever. Thankfully, his is not a psychedelia of revivialism but rather a music style of timelessness and sustainability. Like Guided By Voices, The Bevis Frond's take on past decades' music sits in a strange middle ground between referential indie rock and reverent classic rock. Its makers don't pretend the last 30 years never happened; they're just too old to be anything but what they are--aging hippies in a postpunk world.

Though the Bevis Frond became an actual band in the early '90s, for the most part Saloman has stuck to the same do-it-all-yourself approach, with a mix of heavy acid blues and tuneful-but-messy folk rock. North Circular, his latest two-CD set, is a more of the same, with all the good and bad that that implies. When he rocks in a garage metal mode, the music aptly expresses Saloman's place in the rock continuum: somewhere between Led Zeppelin and Soundgarden; or a late-blooming Husker Du. This is also where his worst classic rock impulses get the better of him, such as on a 13-minute guitar epic,"The Pips."

But mostly he sticks to more crafted (if somewhat formulaic) Byrds-like tunes such as "Revival" and "The Wind Blew All around Me," the kind folk pop goddess-in-progress Mary Lou Lord often adopts. More lyrical, these define The Bevis Frond literally: A still-vibrant middle-ager ("Stars Burn Out"), defiant of hippie-haters ("There's Always One"), and patron saint to a style that will continue, if only for our own good ("That's Why You Need Us"). --Roni Sarig