John Wesley Harding is darting around the New York offices of his new record company, Zero Hour, with the manic energy of an eight-year-old. He's been cooped up all day long doing interviews, and as he slides over to the company fax machine to look over a page listing his upcoming tour dates, it's clear he's relishing this break from talking to the press. Ever the affable gentleman, though, he eventually clears off a stack of envelopes from a chair in the office's main room and sits down to chat about his sixth and latest album, Awake.

Harding first came on the scene nine years ago with the release of It Happened One Night. An upstart, he declared himself the "bastard son" of Bob Dylan and Joan Baez; a literate and ironic neo-folkie with enough bile to win over a younger, hipper audience not attuned to folk music. Over the years, the British native developed a devoted following (including Bruce Springsteen, who featured Harding as one of his opening acts during his 1995 solo acoustic tour). But with Awake, Harding says he sought to stake out some new musical ground. "As much as I liked New Deal [his previous album, released in 1995 on Rhino] it was not as ambitious a record as I could have made," he says.

"So I decided to bring all my disparate influences into one record." According to Harding, those influences include Dr. Dre's productions of 2pac, the forward-thinking DJ music on British label Mo' Wax's Heads compilations, the pulsing modern classical music of Michael Nyman, Gavin Bryars and Meredith Monk and the orchestrated pop of French songwriter Serge Gainsbourg. "People said to me it's going to be tough to make the record you're talking about, because the music you want doesn't have chords, it just has a groove; there's no tune to it, it's just a repetitive kind of mantra thing and then you get a chorus with someone else singing it and then a guy starts rapping." One man who actually understood what Harding was going for was Seattle music stalwart Scott McCaughey, of the Minus Five and the Young Fresh Fellows, who Harding says encouraged him to follow his twisted muse.

And it's a lucky thing, too. Filled with idiosyncratic quirks and incidental sounds, Awake is quite an achievement, veering from crafty pop songs to disarmingly beautiful ballads. Harding's trademark wit and keen storytelling remain intact on songs like "Window Seat," the tale of a man who lives his entire life onboard a plane, and on the hypnotic "Sweat Tears Blood and Come," a kind of warped love song. The album was recorded in Harding's adopted hometown of San Francisco with local power pop wunderkind Chris Von Sneidern (who also twiddled knobs on New Deal, and whom Harding describes as "a genius"), and employs a more studio-driven approach than much of Harding's previous work. "Chris and I really decided to test some ground," he says. "We got out the Moogs, dimmed the lights, recorded a whole band on 'Burn' and then decided it's completely boring, but the choruses are great, and then whacked out the verses ... I really enjoyed doing it."

Next on Harding's docket is a short promotional tour of Borders bookstores and then a full-fledged tour with a band. As for his next recording project, Harding says he'd like to further explore the connection he's made with McCaughey. "I think the two of us couldcome up with something really good," he says. "And if we didn't, we'd have a great timetrying."
IAN LANDAU