Today, while driving, I listened to I Want You to Live 100 Years and Mos Def's Black on Both Sides back to back. The result: I spent the entire afternoon chanting the mantra, "Warn Defever ain't got no soul/ Warn Defever isn't rock and roll..." And, frankly he doesn't and he isn't, at least not this time out. For 100 Years, His Name is Alive's chief executive oddball assembled 11 faux-folk originals and a Willie Nelson cover, gave his various ethereal female vocalists the day off, put aside his normal bag of production tricks and just recorded himself playing the guitar and actually singing for a change.

The result, not surprisingly, is one strange little album. The songs are interspersed with excerpts from a bizarre record featuring a man (coincidentally named Warren) capable of producing uncanny imitations of saws, trains, chickens, and fire dogs. These interludes add a sort of texture to the experience of the album, turning it into an impossible found document, perhaps discovered among the contents of a recently uncorked time capsule.

The songs themselves aren't far off from imitations of popular music from an alternate past. Good, old fashioned hearth-side singalongs, Depression-era blues and imaginary Baptist hymns are mixed with bizarre lyrical turns ("The food I like is natural food, wooden fork and wooden spoon") to reconstruct a musical tradition that never exactly existed to begin with. The effect is heightened by low fidelity recording techniques and the fact that Defever, in his characteristic duplicity, has shrouded the album in the sonic equivalent of a layer of dust, water stains and scratches.

Underneath the crud are some excellent songs. Defever's songwriting is at the heart of His Name is Alive, and this setting creates a fascinating picture of what a HNIA album might be like in its nascency. It's easy to imagine any of these songs suddenly transformed by Defever's hand into a dub anthem or a tape-spliced surf-rock freakout; that he resists those temptations proves surprisingly gratifying.

Cynics will say that Defever really shouldn't be singing-- hey, they've said the same thing about Mos Def-- and it's true that this album sheds some light on his decision to remain silent through most of His Name is Alive's material. Somehow, though, his quavering voice is oddly endearing on 100 Years, and the album's 31-minute running time gives the songs room to breathe without grating.

Though it's most likely to appeal to rabid His Name is Alive fans and elderly Mormons nostalgic for their pioneering days, I Want You to Live 100 Years is a fascinating album and well worth looking into.

-Zach Hooker