Album: David Baerwald

Here Comes The New Folk Underground, Lost Highway

Since 1993's album Triage – his unflinching autopsy of the American Dream – David Baerwald has been silent as a solo artist, expending his efforts either on soundtrack work for films such as Reality Bites, Grace of my Heart and Moulin Rouge (for which he received a Golden Globe nomination), or on albums by Michael Jackson, Robbie Robertson and Sheryl Crow (whose Tuesday Night Music Club he co-wrote). As with The Flaming Lips, his new album was triggered by tragedy, in this case the death of the seven-year-old son of Crow's producer Bill Bottrell. Originally released as A Fine Mess on two home-burnt CDs, Here Comes the New Folk Underground is Baerwald's attempt to "make sense of the senseless", thankfully without sacrificing the streak of acerbic cynicism that marks much of his work. Like the album title, it's full of contradictions, slipping from the empathy and tolerance of "Why" and "Compassion" to the reprobate narrative of "If (A Boy Whore in a Man's Jail)", whose pungent drollerie ("If I ever thought about why I do all of those crazy things that I do/ Well, I might not ever do them anymore/ And then what would I do?") is set to louche, Randy Newman-esque piano and horns. A gifted pasticheur, Baerwald turns his hand to a variety of styles – faux-trad banjo shuffle ("Why"), lazy Let it Bleed raunch ("Compassion"), wistful Springsteen tragedy ("The Crash"), funky New Orleans shuffle ("Bozo Weirdo Wacko Creep") and Steely Dan-style pop-jazz stroll ("Nothing's Gonna Bring Me Down") – climaxing in a "Hellbound Train" that belts along like the Burritos in full flow. Intelligent, sophisticated and moving, in equal parts.