Axis of Evol

Axis‘ cover art, pink rosebuds and black-eyed skeletons, gets at Vancouver singer-songwriter Stephen McBean’s duality just right. The CD’s bookends — ”Comas” and ”How We Can Get Free” — are haunting country-psych ballads; ”New Drugs” and ”Lord Let Us Shine” go for the fuzzy floor stomping of early Beck. He’s a man taken with strange angles; Evol is just love spelled backward. B