For John Hiatt, there is rock after 40. The past few records by this perennial critics' fave and songwriter-to-the-world were the very picture of literate, tasteful roots rock, rife with heartfelt examinations of grown-up concerns like regret, renewal and the joys of parenthood. Album 11, Perfectly Good Guitar, is a more decadent affair. Working with producer Matt Wallace (Faith No More, Paul Westerberg), Hiatt has rounded up an unruly gang of younger players, including School of Fish guitarist Michael Ward and Wire Train drummer Brian MacLeod. The usual menu of love-struck laments and bluesy balladry is augmented by surrealist, goofy story songs and a reliable punk-meets-bar-band crunch.

It's three chords and a cloud of fuzz all the way, beginning with "Something Wild," a Hiatt song previously recorded by Iggy Pop. Ward's playing screeches with a fervor never displayed at his day job, while Hiatt's scratchy growl is locked in a permanent smirk, steamrolling over clever couplets and borderline rhymes ("muscles/corpuscles" and "Helter-Skelter/Mississippi Delta" being two examples). "Cross My Fingers" is a crackling AOR anthem, while Hiatt hits a new high for metaphorical weirdness with "The Wreck of the Barbie Ferrari," a bizarre glimpse of a frustrated family man who vents his rage on Barbie, Ken and Skipper dolls before turning a shotgun on himself.

Still, for all the loud, loose energy he displays, Hiatt can't help showing his age. After all, penning a curmudgeonly complaint about the Kurt Cobains of the world – "It breaks my heart, to see those stars/Smashing a perfectly good guitar" – isn't exactly the punk-rock thing to do. It is, however, a brilliantly funny bit of rock-myth bashing set to an early John Mellencamp beat.

Hiatt juxtaposes a young man's failed six-string romance, which sees him cradling his cracked Sunburst like an infant, with the reckless rock-star pose that gets the girls screaming. "There ought to to be a law with no bail/Smash a guitar and you go to jail," he insists. "With no chance for early parole/You don't get out until you get some soul." Hiatt touts craft and class, his specialties, over the fame and glamour that have always eluded him, secure in the knowledge that he's a man who's already got soul. (RS 668)

JASON COHEN