After the straightforward verisimilitude of its CD/DVD release Live at the Ram’s Head, the new subdudes album, Flower Petals, is a mannered, carefully wrought set piece that takes a dramatic step away from the grim reality of life in the new millennium. In fact it’s a rock band version of a historical novel, with the ’dudes costumed in 19th Century garb and writing about simpler times in the Old West. Themes of courtly love and the kind of war where the combatants looked each other in the eye are matched to nature imagery and agrarian landscapes where work is done by hand, morality is administered by the Bible and the gallows, and riches are measured by a field of corn. The album even presents a story line—a soldier is killed, leaving behind a lover who refuses to accept his passing. The townspeople execute a drifter for the crime and the narrator has a Saul/St. Paul moment of realization that they hung the wrong man.

The songs are beautifully crafted, built around Tommy Malone and John Magnie’s strong lead vocals and superb harmony arrangements for their band partners. Acoustic strings and accordion provide the instrumental accompaniment, with no solos except on the instrumental coda, and only the bass amplified throughout. The most revved up moment on the album comes in “Redemption Dance,” a rollicking hoedown with Jimmy Messa calling the square dance.

Flower Petals is indeed that dreaded pop beast, the concept album, and as such is a radical departure from the band’s past recordings. But unlike the contents of most concept albums, these songs are not weakened by dependence on a story line. Each is an imaginative entity unto itself.