Safe Boating Is No Accident

This album marks a complete reinvention of Safe Boating Is No Accident, starting with opening track “Her New Man.” It’s as though these guys ditched the Americana/crypto-avant-garde songwriting of the past in favor of an unrefined sincerity — like their irony and incisive humor have come full circle to a kind of disarming earnestness, with sentiments and ideas hanging off their collective sleeve. “My Baby’s on a Government Watchlist” could be a Lou Reed song stripped down to resigned yet defiant vulnerability. There’s still a thumb in the eye of The Man, but no attempt at inspired trickery. Safe Boating has done enough of that, and “Straight World” sounds like a song by the Jam without the Englishness. Even the closer, “Tyler Durden Has a Facebook Page,” ends the EP on a note of pure, unvarnished rock and roll.