Psychopharmacology

Anyone who can growl “being born’s where I went wrong,” without making us want to kick his sorry little ass, must be on to something. That’s just one of a host of depressive turns-of-phrase we get from Firewater frontman Tod A.(nee Ashley) on their third album, Psychopharmacology, but his wry, mordant sense of humor turns such lines from pathetic confessions into tragi-comic zingers. The band does their part to help as well, playing like Nick Cave’s Bad Seeds on steroids and injecting some real zest into these gutter anthems. Occasionally, Ashley’s degenerate poet thing feels like schtick, but he rarely lets style overwhelm the truth. (Is there a man among us who can’t feel the line “she’s the mistake I’ve been dying to make” deep in his bones?) Plus, it’s hard not to admire a guy who can find the funny in car insurance investigation (“Car Crash Collaborator”) and planes falling out of the sky (“Black Box Recording”).