All they need is 'Love'

CHOICE

Juliana Hatfield & Frank Smith

Boston singer-songwriter Juliana Hatfield always did have impeccable taste in musical collaborators. So it's no surprise that Frank Smith's "Heavy Handed Peace and Love," the inaugural release on Hatfield's Ye Olde Records label, is a dandy.

For the uninitiated, the Boston-bred Frank Smith is a band, not a man, and -- like Wilco and the Handsome Family -- it's one that tweaks and twists its alt-country approach (lap steel, banjo, harmonica) in all sorts of disquieting, alluring directions. The group's fourth album opens with a gathering noisy storm that coalesces around the self-lacerating "Liar and a Thief," sung with confessional candor by frontman Aaron Sinclair (onetime drummer for Boston punks the Lot Six). The deadpanning, Dahmer-esque psychopath contemplating mom and God on "Lovesick Cynics" brings to mind what political philosopher Hannah Arendt famously called "the banality of evil," while a cover of Holly Golightly's vengeful "Virtually Happy," rearranged as a courtly waltz, sounds like an arsonist quietly setting fire to a barn dance.

Meanwhile, the considerably sunnier, six-song "Sittin' in a Tree . . ." EP finds Hatfield teaming with the quintet for a disc that's a pleasant, though lightweight, diversion. While the strained, pet-metaphor numbers, "If Only We Were Dogs" and "Kitten," are too cute for their own good, the country-rock flair of "364" and the ruminative "On Your Mind" are small yet striking gems in the jewels of Hatfield's indie-pop crown. [Jonathan Perry]

Frank Smith plays a CD-release show at the Middle East Downstairs Saturday.