Mark Olson & Gary Louris: Ready for the Flood

Back in the 90s, there were times — usually around the third loop through Hollywood Town Hall — when I’d realize that the Jayhawks were my favorite band. The ragged sweet quality of the Louris-Olson vocals and the straightahead guitar work would blend with lyrics elliptical enough to merge with whatever thoughts were beating through my heart and with something else — the first day above seventy degrees; a good beer; a call from a friend in Minnesota. It was a short-lived, glorious feeling: after a few days, maybe a couple of weeks, it’d pass.

Ready for the Flood doesn’t inspire that kind of giddiness. It’s subdued — to the point that the first time I listened it through, I thought it was tired and aimless and I didn’t like it. But it turns out I do. The soft spots are limited to a trio of songs (foremost among them “Turn Your Pretty Name Around,” which knits lesser Gram Parsons verses with a flabby Glen Frey chorus). But the rest is great, starting with “The Rose Society,” one of those classic fragmented tales of someone’s hurt and loss, with the kind of Louris nonverbal vocalizing that can still make the hair on my arms stand up. “Bicycle” has Dylan leanings, with guitar work courtesy of that guy from All Things Must Pass. And “Doves and Stones” is the same kind of vaguely Christian Mark Olson gem that used to show up in ones and twos on the Jayhawks’ first discs.

Instrumentation is heavy on the guitar-strumming basics, but some others are thrown in as well: lots of organ, and on “Bloody Hands,” the first mandolin I remember hearing on a Louris-Olson joint production. (But feel free to burn me on that; I didn’t go back and look it up.)

Overall, completely worth hearing if you’ve ever had more than a flicker of fondness for the Jayhawks or the side projects of either of these guys.