(Self-released, digital)
Burlington singer-songwriter and guitarist Joe Agnello is best known around Vermont’s music scene as a shred monster who specializes in covering other artists. Whether it’s his prodigious work in the Grateful Dead tribute genre with Dobbs’ Dead or Zach Nugent’s Dead Set, playing Ween songs with Knights of the Brown Table, or tackling Led Zeppelin as part of Nico Suave & the Mothership, Agnello is a master of interpreting the masters.
It’s a crapshoot when a tribute musician steps out with an album of original material: It’s often all too easy to tell that an artist has spent their career trying to sound like someone else, usually with incredibly derivative results.
Not so with Agnello’s beautiful mess of a record, NFLSD. Playing under his solo moniker of Joe Something, the guitarist has crafted a wonderfully strange collection of stoner rock, weirdo prog, jam and ’90s alt-rock full of clever twists and turns. While it’s far from his first foray into original music — Agnello has released several singles over the past few years and was a member of Burlington jam band Swimmer — his debut album puts his stellar musicianship and idiosyncratic songwriting on full display.
Opener “Dart” starts with a distorted guitar lick and a rambling, tribal blues beat that bring to mind grunge underdogs Toadies before it settles into a rangy country-rock jam. Pedal steel player Ben Rodgers stretches out in style on the outro. The song is an early indication that Agnello isn’t fixated on composing tight, pop-leaning pieces — he’s letting the jams fly, as he does on “Thanks Frank.” With ample amounts of fuzz and the octave pedal working overtime, Agnello’s guitar tone sounds as thick as a river in flood. Though clearly steeped in multiple traditions and a keen student of other players’ styles, Agnello has a distinctive sound. He doesn’t come across as some kind of guitar clone of Bob Weir, Jimmy Page or even Dean Ween.
“Shrinking Brain” is the closest approximation of the jam-rock stylings he plays onstage, settling into a Southern-rock groove and leaning into vocal twang. File it under “festival banger.” If the entire album echoed this track, it might sound like a lost moe. record, but as an outlier on NFLSD, it somehow works perfectly.
Agnello indulges his weirder side with “Janky Fucker” and whips out the kazoo on “Lobotomy 2” before landing on the epic blues-rock finale “Moving to Maine.” The last track starts with a gargantuan groove among Agnello, bassist Jack Vignone and drummer Jack McChesney. The trio ride it into a psych-rock verse, eventually ending the record with a face-melting guitar solo.
Of course, there are traces of Agnello’s influences throughout the album’s seven tracks. But he’s in such control — wielding them like hidden weapons, revealed at just the right moment — that they only serve to highlight the record’s oddball charm and fuzzed-out power.
NFLSD is available on major streaming services.