*** The Delta 72

THE SOUL OF A NEW MACHINE

(Touch & Go)

The Delta 72 customize classic R&B using the same primitive science Jon Spencer and his Blues Explosion apply to the blues -- take it into the garage, soup it up with an injection of spastic white-boy punk energy, and run it on overdrive. With one big difference: there's a lot less tongue in the cheek of Delta 72 frontguy Gregg Foreman. Although he and Spencer both grew up around the same earnest DC hardcore scene, Foreman seems to have held onto some of the righteous emocore spirit that never managed to penetrate Spencer's sharkskin suit of irony.

The Soul of a New Machine finds Foreman fronting a foursome that swings harder and just plain better, even on thrashier tunes, than the one that raucously rocked Delta 72's debut, last year's The R&B of Membership (Touch & Go). Sarah Stolfa adds tastefully cheesy Farfisa organ to the muscular Muscle Shoals grooves laid down by former Goats bassist Bruce Reckahn and former Mule drummer Jason Kourkounis. And Foreman takes his slide guitar down to the proverbial river, where the surface may be polluted with the greasy residue of punk, but the water's still invigorating.

-- Matt Ashare