Pitchfork

A great one-sentence review of a Butterglory release in some zine years ago: "Now that Pavement is R.E.M., everybody is Pavement." Now that Wilco is being inaugurated as heir to those bands, the race is accidentally on to be Wilco. Which is not to imply that Wilco is done being Wilco, just that they've become Wilco the Superentity, the much-prophesied "American Radiohead" that Modest Mouse was supposed to become, leaving a sizable gap where Wilco the mere Respectable Act once was. The re-release of these 1998 and 2000 records by Minnesota's Mason Jennings are evidence that he's poised on the brink of a brink: he could assume a lofty role at the pre-infallibility level of Tweedy's outfit, or he could plop into the nutrasweet realm and get stuck between Dave Matthews and Eagle-Eye Cherry. Even his name rides the fence, sounding as much like a wizened troubadour as it does the snobby soccer-prick from high school who wore his shinguards to study hall.

The following consumers should take note of Mr. Jennings, assuming you've clung to some disposable income: fans of Hayden's upbeat moments, My Morning Jacket's cheesy moments, or Simon Joyner's short-winded moments, as well as fans of earnest acoustic Beck, and Royal City when they meander. Be warned, though, he poses for photos in fields with horses, leaning his guitar against his leg. I'm just saying. I want to be all perma-cool aesthete and slap Jennings down, but he's hard not to like as long as you aren't expecting lyrical profundity. What he's got is an original voice, an obtuse thing with look-Ma-no-youth heft that brings to mind, but does not sound like, sirs Farrar and Oldham. I would have mentioned young Dylan, but I have to deny the messianic delusion of Jennings' diehard fans (many, many of which, by the way, are heterosexual females, no doubt piqued by how well the self-consciously cute performer fits alongside Ryan Adams and Jeff Buckley in sideburn-themed CD collections).

But to harp on the voice. It can be bulbous, then he can deflate it into a wisp. It can swagger, then go butt-naked love-whipped. The intonations can fluctuate within songs; words burp and then sail. On "Godless," this cracker manages to sound, well, black. The song begins in a kind of yard-stomp and builds to a wailing punk anthem, a two-minute cross-section of all the years between the Smithsonian Anthology of American Folk Music and Stephen Malkmus' fetching brat-yelp. One thing Jennings' voice doesn't do well is get defiant-- a few of the in-yo-face bits come off a mite windy.

The debut is a tight batch of love songs, during which Jennings isn't afraid to throw the eff-word into the most radio-friendly ditties. Classic songwriter hyper-self-referentiality is abundant here; the speakers use constructions equivalent to "as for me, I feel like I verbed my noun." Perhaps this is germane to the glaze of cosmic significance that lovers project, a quantity that peaks during the refrain of the otherwise sublime "1997": a couple perceive themselves to be at the center of a supernatural event. This is a tuneful, unpretentious record that allows some of its songs room to switch tempos or throw in some dissonant acoustic-skroid a la the Violent Femmes.

On Birds Flying Away, Jennings dares to bring the party down by whipping out his politics and God and Jesus. A lot. The album opens in medias res with the great line "And with the world comes misery," includes a song from a woman's perspective and one about people coming down from mountains with birds trapped in their minds (mere coincidence, I suppose, that a rare Neutral Milk Hotel track boasts a very similar topic), and ends with a pulsing, extended, screaming, clang-jam. "Black Panther" bursts into a horn section, and "Stars Shine Quietly" (as opposed to loudly?) is driven by breathy saxes, touches that season the guitar/bass/drum arrangements. The electric solos are estimable Americana, the brushed drums can be pimp, and some of the more epic chord progressions are reminiscent of Carter Burwell's soundtracks for Coen brothers films. He even acquits himself, I think, on two much-maligned white-liberal agit-pop tunes about MLK and Corporate America. The portentous plucking or reggae-venom doesn't falter, and Jennings is bold to expand his scope beyond that of acts who can't escape the diary-fodder of 'relationships.'

Did I compare him to enough people? He's a male Edith Frost? If Jakob Dylan was Jakob Waits? If Barry White were white? If Jesus was into drummy neo-folk and was a "Dawson's Creek" regular? If you don't feel up to deciphering the irony-maze of the Drag City vague-abonds, or if you're a codependent in need of a safe bet for the closing number on a one-month anniversary mixtape, this man writes a decent guileless, baldly windswept love song. Still, you might be a hardcore indie-rocker who finds Jennings a tad too convivial. I admit there's something Corn Flake about him, but nothing that better packaging couldn't surmount. All he has to do is shave that pubic-testimony lower-lip tuft and get some worthy cover art instead of photos of himself (a tactic that smacks of Nashville-size idea-lessness). If he got tattoos and a scarf, he'd be ready to soundtrack a Wes Anderson slo-mo tracking shot. But if he ends up on the soundtrack to Scooby Doo 2, you never read about him here, my name at the bottom is a mistake, and Rollstone McSpin hacked his way into our FTP to post this.