Twenty-five years in, Tara Key and Co. release a double album featuring what is no doubt the best music of their career. “Opus Mixtum” brings together every facet of Antietam, from ferocious bluesy rockers to atmospheric instrumentals and, of course, plenty of hook-filled pop just south of Yo La Tengo’s border. For fans of Dead Moon, Neil Young, YLT and Patti Smith, if you don’t like Antietam, you don’t like rock and roll. Period.

In the four years since we last heard from Antietam with their Victory Park album, we've seen bands like Mission of Burma, Pixies, the Slits and Pylon hitting the reunion circuit, not to mention Sonic Youth touring to celebrate the 20th anniversary of Daydream Nation. But Tara Key and Co. never went away, and while they haven't exactly been as prolific in their 25-year existence as, say, indie stalwarts Yo La Tengo, like that band, Antietam is making the best music of their career today. It's not that the individual members of this NYC by way of Louisville trio only dabble in music; Key, her husband Tim Harris and OM's very own Josh Madell all are active musicians with their names appearing on countless records by Yo La, Retsin, the Naysayer, the Special Pillow and Tralala to name a few, as well as Key's solo releases. But when Antietam releases an album, it's as if time stops; the band simply plays raw, powerful rock 'n' roll that doesn't kowtow to trends. It's no wonder that they've developed an extremely devoted cult following made up of fellow musicians and folks who simply love unpretentious rock.

Their longest album to date, Opus Mixtum is also Antietam's most diverse offering, and that says something considering that they've never been easy to pigeonhole. Their original modus operandi was to create two separate albums, the rockier set of songs to be recorded at Brooklyn's Seaside Lounge with producer Josh Clark (who has now become an auxiliary member), and a more subdued, instrumental counterpart to be recorded in Tara and Tim's living room. At some point, the sessions became intertwined and what resulted is this double-disc release, which fluidly moves through southern-fried indie rockers to hook-filled dream pop and some lovely piano- and string-led atmospheric detours. The trio's centerpiece has always been Tara Key's magnificent guitar playing and unpretentiously emotive vocals, and both sound great here, with Antietam taking full advantage of the multi-track.

Disc one is the more direct of the two and classic Antietam, from the balls-out "RPM" in which Key's urgent chant of those three letters packs the same punch as Patti Smith spelling out "G-L-O-R-I-A" and then leads into some spidery guitar shredding, to the mid-tempo open-chord jangle of "I Know." While there are plenty more rock moments on disc two -- including the riff-driven "Pennants and Flags," the folky "On the Humble" (which features Eleventh Dream Day guitarist Rick Rizzo) and proto-punker "You/I" -- we also find Antietam taking many more sonic liberties. Opening track "Hasten" is closer to Key's solo work, her breathy melody accompanied by a finger-picked guitar and some light piano work, with Mark Howell's trumpet floating through the hushed atmosphere. "March Echo" is Antietam's answer to kosmische musik, with tape loops fluttering above echoed clusters of piano and layers of strings, while the nine-minute album closer "Tierra del Fuego" ropes together spaghetti western ambience with spacey drones and feedback. Listening to Opus Mixtum, it's impossible for me not to think back to Yo La Tengo's watershed album And Then Nothing Turned Itself Inside-Out, which found that band successfully recasting themselves and bringing the fans along for the ride. Let's just hope it doesn't take another four years for Antietam to make their sequel. [GH] (February 13, 2008)