Canada’s finest alt-country “punkgrass” quintet had already released two fine indie albums (Hurtin’ For Certain and Roger’s Waltz) when they dropped Rebuild The Wall on a completely unsuspecting public back in ’01. A two-CD recasting of Pink Floyd’s masterpiece of isolation, it was cause for both consternation and cheap thrills among classic rockers who know their roots. But it was not, as some have said, a gimmick, as evidenced by their triumphant return with Guitar Pickin’ Martyrs. As it turns out, pain, isolation, and depression are components as integral to the Wrongs’ sound as they are to Floyd’s. This mostly-original album has an excellent title, but the general feel is summed up even better by the title of track 5: “Broken Fucking Heart.” Their sadness makes them angry. This is no joke: Wright and company remain pretty as a mountain stream on top, and as deep and cold as one underneath.

“I like that hillbilly music, the kind you don’t hear on the radio,” the band wails on “Race To The Top,” but while their grasp of the genre is impressive (all percolating banjos, weepy steel, and whining fiddle, albeit slightly electrified and produced like a mid-fi rock album), it’s all just a tarp covering the pain winding through lyrics like “You can take all that guilt and shove it up your kilt,” from “Devious Dissembler,” and “I get a hard-on or cry at the drop of my hat,” courtesy of “Not Feeling Fine.” Even ostensible party songs like the title track eventually reveal the desperation beneath. A giant candy-coated fuck-you valentine for the heartbroken, the gorgeously weepy “Guitar Pickin’ Martyrs reveals” that Wright and company are indeed emotionally adrift in the same space-madness void Roger Waters lived in for a decade. Or, as Wright asks in “Race To The Top”: “It’s a matter of finding a place to breathe / Should I stand and die or live on my knees? Does subservience bring any kind of peace?”