Not that it matters much. Like the best rock poetry, McGuire's lyrics are more about sound and imagery than highfalutin "meaning" or coherency. His dark, urban vignettes sound like the work of a younger, more volatile Tom Waits. In his best moments as a vocalist, he's just as responsible for keeping the jam in orbit as the stellar Hurley and Watt. Still, while the lyrics can certainly make the song, there are a few moments on The Way Things Work when they threaten to sink the ship entirely. The aforementioned "Punk" is the worst offender: McGuire threatening to succumb to boho self-parody as he hollers sloganistic clunkers like, "let's say I've got a number/that number is 50,000/that's 10% of 500,000" and "the working classes are manipulated!" I'm all for stretching the boundaries of poetic expression, but isn't blurring the lines between art and socialist pamphlet just a bridge too far? The rest of the band aren't quite off the hook, either. "Jams" though they may be, the musical backing dovetails ever so slightly in the last clutch of tracks, resulting in a listening experience that ranges from new and inspiring to frustrating and monotonous. Meanwhile, the most interesting grooves are consigned unfairly to the song's shortest tracks: the jazzy "Something Eternal" clocks in at only one minute and 24 seconds, while "The New Bluesman," with its sinewy bass work and saxophone textures (not to mention a spot-on Beefheart impersonation by McGuire) barely exceeds the two-minute mark. Unfettered improvisation, as these two tracks testify, has its limits.
But it can also provide moments of surprising heft. Take "Where You Find It," kickstarting the record with an ironclad drum and bass rhythm while Baiza's feedback and McGuire's yelped, evocative description of a dingy rock'n'roll club dart in and out of the beat. There's a reason why variations on "Where You Find It" bookend the record, at tracks two and fifteen: it's the heart of the album, the reason why this interesting experiment is actually worth listening to. In what could have been an unbelievably pretentious project - borderline fusion, for Chrissakes - Unknown Instructors paradoxically remind us why we loved pure, unadulterated rock'n'roll in the first place. "Where You Find It" is heartfelt...nostalgic, even. An ode and a eulogy for anyone who's ever worshipped the mutual racket of "four numbskulls who work at the gas station, the Pizza Hut or not at all." It's the thrust and the draw of rock music encapsulated in a few verses and a simple, undulating bassline; its jazz/poetry affectations brought down to the level of the masses, rather than the usual, ridiculous goal of "elevating" rock music to a higher cultural standard. This ain't the usual grad student jazz-rock, in other words, and that's precisely what makes it so good. Where does high art meet low grime? McGuire, Baiza, Hurley and Watt were right: this is where you find it.
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