Enduring the American Dream

Of all the offbeat collectives that flourished in Chicago in the ’90s, few were more consistently challenging and rewarding than Cheer-Accident, an absurdist-minded avant-rock ensemble active in various forms since the early ’80s, and orbiting around multi-instrumentalist, singer and lone consistent member Thymme Jones. No one album tells the full Cheer-Accident story, but Enduring the American Dream touched on their many strengths, including unsettling sound collage, wistful baroque pop and hard-edged prog, often co-existing in a single track, as on epics here like “Dismantling the Berlin Waltz” and “Desert Song.” While Cheer-Accident maintained a connection to the broader Chicago avant-garde — through Jones’ collaborations with Gastr del Sol and others, and Vandermark 5 member Jeb Bishop guesting here and elsewhere in their catalog — they were at this time and still remain a world unto themselves, yielding an output that’s both confounding and strangely affecting.