Romanticism has never been a question with the Rock*a*Teens. Whether hanging around abandoned county fairs at twilight in a decrepit pickup or dressed in a faded, nearly shining linen suit, the height of Georgia fashion sixty years past, the ragged beauty of the Rock*a*Teens' music can't hide a certain crepuscular grandeur: that warm beer is finest Champagne (and its magic in quantity indeed erases this distinction), and that the desperation that often crackles through their music comes from the flickering embers of a once and future burning hope. And if my prose is baroque, so too is the music on Sweet Bird of Youth, ornate if a bit chipped and worn. Increasingly, the band supplements its trademark cacophony of reverbed guitars with old roller-rink organs, pianos left untuned since the 1950s, even the occasional thrift-store synth or a harpsichord abandoned in a walled-off room of someone's grandmother's estate. At the risk of repeating every review I've written about the band, I'll point out once again Chris Lopez's raw, yearning vocals, the simple yet sturdy power of their melodies, the determined thwack of bass and drums. And to convey the mood, I can do little better than to cite a few song titles: "I Hope You Never See Me Like This," "Our Future Was Then," and, mordantly, "If I Wanted to Be Famous (I'd Have Shot Someone)" and the closing "Strike Down the Band." Much is, as another title has it, "Betwixt or Between": between past and future, dream and reality, will and fate, and (as the CD's title suggests) youth and the passage of time. But things are never heavy going: raggedness remains the Rock*a*Teens' saving grace, the flawed surface always more compelling than the overpolished. The Rock*a*Teens may have their heads in the stars, but they know damned well their and everyone else's feet tread the gutters as well.

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