Critic’s Choice

Brett Netson, the guitarist/vocalist behind Caustic Resin, which hits the Lion’s Lair on Thursday, July 12, was an original member of Built to Spill, and he still maintains an association with the band. That doesn’t mean, however, that Keep on Truckin, the latest Resin disc on Up Records, is a poor sideman’s version of a better-known group. Whereas the Spillers, led by Doug Martsch, tend to keep a tight grip on lyricism even when they’re zooming into the extended-solo stratosphere, Netson and cohorts Mike Johnson (bass) and Pat Perkins (drums) would rather search for the ultimate in heaviness — and they find it often enough. “People Fall Down,” the opening slab o’ Sabbath, is loud, sludgy and simpler than the plot of a Jean-Claude Van Damme movie, and if “Fry Like Ace Jones,” “Wizard of the Upper Snake River” and the rest vary the dynamics a bit, they’re consistently overwrought and occasionally hysterical — which, in this case, are two very good things. After all, sanity can be awfully dull.