Album review: Steve Wynn & the Miracle 3’s ‘Northern Aggression’

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Steve Wynn’s amalgam of Lou Reed’s streetwise brashness, Neil Young’s openheartedness and Bob Dylan’s oblique poetry is pretty hard to resist, and who’d want to try?

L.A.’s veteran indie rocker is on a tear in his third outing with the up-for-anything Miracle 3 — guitarist Jason Victor, drummer Linda Pitmon and bassist Dave DeCastro — fusing Wynn’s penchant for Americana rock, psychedelia, brutal punk and extended jams into an intriguingly seductive blend.

“Everybody wants to wonder why,” he muses in “Colored Lights” before dropping the song’s exquisite punch line: “I don’t know why.” Wynn makes you relish wondering with him.

— Randy Lewis

Steve Wynn & the Miracle 3
“Northern Aggression”
YepRoc
Three and a half stars