Freedy Johnston

More than anything else, Freedy Johnston is a storyteller. His stories are as evocative as they are economical, filled with memorable characters and sparkling details while leaving out nearly as much as they include. They're often quite grim, too. Prisons are a recurring theme in Johnston's songs, not just literal prisons of concrete and steel but the prisons people create within themselves through the choices they make. Yet once his lyrics are endowed with the plain, good-natured melodic backing that Johnston's made his trademark, even his most downhearted tales sound more sweet than bitter.

An inauspicious opening entry, The Trouble Tree, is lackluster roots rock rendered almost unlistenable by Johnston's strangled whine. Can You Fly is something else entirely: 13 gripping pieces of guitar-driven power folk that present an array of losers, drifters, gamblers, and a mortician's daughter (plus, on "Trying to Tell You I Don't Know," Johnston's own experience of selling his family's Kansas farm to finance his music career) in a harsh yet always sympathetic light. The singing has calmed down, blossoming at times into a high lonesome croon, and the accompanists, who include such major names as Marshall Crenshaw and Syd Straw, are top-notch. One of the album's finest songs, "The Lucky One," also appears on the Unlucky EP along with four other worthwhile tracks, the niftiest a cover of Jimmy Webb's "Wichita Lineman."

From this point on, Johnston's done little wrong. His next two releases were moving, eloquent pop records for grown-ups, highlighted by slice-of-life minimasterpieces such as This Perfect World's title cut and Never Home's "Western Sky." Blue Days Black Nights and Right Between the Promises are slightly less inspired, but both contain songs -- "Moving on a Holiday" on the former, "Radio for Heartache" on the latter -- that are vintage Freedy, capturing poignant moments with such cheerful precision you're not sure whether to laugh or cry. (MAC RANDALL)

From 2004's The New Rolling Stone Album Guide