Jesus Loves Stacey

(Skoda/Dischord)

When it comes to experimentation, it's easy to understand why most bands play it safe. While there's the odd genre-bending success, unfettered musical eclecticism all too often results in an unhinged and unsatisfying final product. Far better to stay close to home and churn out another easily pigeonholed carbon-copy CD - at least you won't get burned.

Fortunately, some bands still dare to take risks. Jesus Loves Stacey, the debut CD from Washington, D.C.-based Cry Baby Cry, is a musical textile woven from many threads, from the Who and Cheap Trick to Patti Smith and the Magnetic Fields. Cry Baby Cry covers these bases and many more, leaping from energetic punk-rock frenzy to tender acoustic ballad and right back again. It's all over the map - and amazingly, it's very, very good.

Part of Jesus's success is due to strong songwriting - Cry Baby Cry ably blends the personal and political, the amusing and the edifying. Take the title track, a meditation on man's inhumanity to man envisioned as a lecture from a harried, street-smart Jesus to a girl named Stacey. It's at once funny and poignant, a serious message cloaked as an energetic pop gem. Strong musicality also helps - confident, tuneful male/female vocals and well-hewn pop hooks anchor even Jesus's most out-there offerings.

A final aside: Cry Baby Cry's impromptu, sparsely-attended free show Friday at Vaudeville was hands down the most fun I've had at a concert this year. My sympathy to the dozens of poor suckers who paid good money to watch generic mall-punk imbeciles Mest at Skrappy's - you missed out!