Someone famous once said that, when things are at their worst, we make our best art. It makes sense. Perfect examples: Bob Dylan’s The Times They Are A-Changin’, Public Enemy’s Fear of a Black Planet, and Bob Marley and the Wailers’ Exodus. Pretty big shoes, were they to be filled. These records had a message and a point. If you listened to them, and I mean really listened to them, you’d get it. They aren't just fun shit to hum along to. They're telling you something.

That’s what this record’s like.

I can’t speak for everyone, and I can’t say I’m absolutely right as to what each and every song is about. All I know is, we’ve spent the last three years living four letters away from the end of the world at all times (B-U-S-H), and we’ve done so in addition to having our own personal burdens to bear. That’s how this pretty world goes. For me, Close My Eyes is both a reminder of it, and an escape from it. Like the Kerouac quote in the liner notes ends: “All I gotta do is close my eyes and it all goes away.” (Read the book that quote’s from, Visions of Gerard, and you appreciate the quote being there even more.)

Close My Eyes is more rocksteady than any of the Slackers' previous releases, and sounds like it came straight out of the Studio One vaults. Weak points in the record? I don’t know, man. From the get-go, they let you know they ain’t fuckin’ around. You wanna groove to the music on each song, but there’s this overwhelming sandess to it all. The opening instrumental (“Shankbon”) is fierce and jumps rhythms (forgive my lack of proper musical terminology) cleverly. “Real War” is serious political venom, spit by singer Marc Lyn, over a deep dub track. “Who Knows” makes me smile, all laid back and charmed by the horn section.

Then there’s “Mommy"-- absolutely the most beautiful thing on the record. It’s the saddest song ever written, at least that I can remember. Singer/songwriter Vic Ruggiero sings about losing his mother with an innocence and sadness similar to that which Kerouac used when penning Visions of Gerard. Whether or not the similarity was intentional doesn’t matter. It makes the album, and it’s conceptual wholeness, seem complete.

If you wanna hear the record before you buy it (September 9), Epitaph Records is supposedly streaming it live the week before it’s released. For now, they have two MP3s available here.

Otherwise, you can hear five tracks here

And four different demo tracks at the Slackers' site.

See you at the shows...