On , his third album under the moniker, finds his uniqueness in the shadow of nearly utter familiarity. A modest production, especially compared to the scope of his cohorts, 's piano-based pop makes use of familiar melodies in a bittersweet way not dissimilar to the late . Indeed, -- who also plays keyboards in the , and leader 's follow-up band, -- turns out ten songs somewhere between resignation and redemption. Numbers like the album-opening title cut (which declare the singer "lost in the pancakes for years and years") and its following number, "Wake Myself to Sleep" ("there's a drunken siren's call/I don't answer it anymore") are somehow defiant in their ringing catchiness, only underscoring some of their most desolate sentiments. isn't about desolation or triumph, though, so much as the small melodies that murmur out of memory, the weary tunes one might invent to sing to himself on a long walk home after a long night, simply because a long walk needs such weary tunes. is an enormously gifted melody writer, and the tunes still carry weight in the morning. Though filled out by his usual band of Athens cohorts -- including bandmates and , 's , and others -- places less emphasis on experimentation for its own sake. Though it's not to say each song doesn't come loaded with rich arrangements and textures. The album-closing "The Next Anything," builds into a celestial wall of horns, strings, and vocals. comparisons might abound, as they often do for -related projects, and there's good reason for it, but is 's own, something new sung with the distant inflection of modern pop's Liverpudlian mother tongue. ~ Jesse Jarnow