In part, Lo-Fi Chorus is about simple "tall tale" country music -- the type of stories inmates tell when sleep doesn't come. It's spending time with a country hero ("Me and Kris Kristofferson stayed at a lodge down south/I'd be drinking whiskey, and he'd just run his mouth"), and coming out the tougher one. The occasional sample ("He was hungry for women and blues") evokes the darker edges of country music that rock-weaned souls tend to favor. There is not a single lyric about homegrown tomatoes, but many mentions of trains, quarries, moonshine, bartenders, rivers and knives that draw blood.

Lo-Fi Chorus is also about taking pride in a talent ("I can make up words, and I can improvise/ Or I can tell the truth, or I can tell you lies") that can make your life better. It's about using a strength ("Listen to the words I'm gonna tell you") to come out feeling temporarily mightier ("I am gonna leave you in the morning"), but eventually worse.

The disc's main conceptual thrust concerns religion and the bleak positions that internal struggles often reward. "David and Goliath" explicitly describes the conclusions Erik Thompson reached before recording the album. As his press sheets also oddly relate, he has no belief in Heaven and Hell, or any of the boundaries which once shaped his philosophy, beyond the small, personal heavens and hells to which our days take us. "Writing Home" is a letter to Thompson's parents in song form ("I'm just writing home, Ma/for the last time/ I do love you"), mixing sweetness, self-pity, punk rebellion and stupid adolescence. The strongest and most scathing piece of "lost faith jamboree" is "Gallows", which borrows initially from Lennon, saying "God is a word...made up by men". The song takes us to a hill, where a rope hangs from a tree, and Erik sings "they'll do to you what they've done to me". Further on, he ups the vitriol ("Religion's for killers and bloody crusades/ And pushing one's will into another one's face"), then closes the song with a funereal military drum salute that always reminds me of Jesus' last days on the cross. Perhaps this is intentional; the song does not become drawn out, so when it ends, Jesus is just plain dead.

There is no denying the youthful brilliance behind this record. There are 23 songs, only one of which (the Petty-like "Sunrise") does not burn bright. Erik Thompson went from church boy to heroin addict to prison inmate to Lo-Fi Chorus frontman, melting his entire being onto wax. The road he's travelled, and maybe still travels, is not a road I'd like to take myself, though his travels have helped him to make art. His singing is wonderful, bringing to mind the spirit of early Clash and Billy Bragg, while the rough, blue, acoustic toughness of his guitar playing flat-out works. The strong melodies and his earnest, soul-strung vocals cannot be denied, and there is amazing energy in his convictions. You can dislike him for his conclusions, and you can wish he mended ties with his folks (yes, the press sheets tell you his life story!), but you won't wish away the ride on which this record takes you. It is, quite seriously, an immediate classic.