Nuthatch-47

Nuthatch-47’s debut album, Respectable Sins, is as sinfully tempting as Scotch on the rocks on a hot afternoon — sans the hangover. A cocktail of rock, blues and Russian ska, Respectable Sins opens with a kicking ditty called “Backgammon,” which is about beating the malaise of living with mom via a roll of the dice. Here, Russian-born frontman Max Kunakhovich’s monotonous baritone is a commodity. But not always. In “Spanish Song,” Kunakhovich’s vocals make a cartoon of an otherwise dreamy duet between accordion and guitar. But you don’t buy an album called Respectable Sins for the instrumentals (as Gypsy-suave as they may be). You buy it for songs with lyrics such as Don’t blame me, blame the economy and If approached by KGB, you can bribe them, honey. In his straightforward delivery, Kunakhovich is the ultimate seller of all things kind of bad: smoking, drinking, gambling, screwing, canoodling, road raging. Respectable Sins is first-rate escapism.