Nobody can tell us the bad news better than Mose Allison. For over thirty years, this premier songwriter, singer and pianist has stared down the oncoming doom, peppering his idiosyncratic blend of jazz and blues with mordant wit and unflinching honesty. Ever Since the World Ended, Allison's first release in four years, cuts even closer to the bone than usual. The stoic humor and acerbic social commentaries are in place, but Allison increasingly turns the X-rays on himself, making this album a more revealing and personal statement.

Taking on the world like a bemused observer who keeps his BS detector permanently set to 10, Allison can be unsparingly and hilariously direct with his caustic comments on such characteristic themes as the banality of secondhand identity ("What's Your Movie," "Tai Chi Life"), the joys of selling out ("Top Forty") and, on the title track, the nagging irritations of global annihilation. "Ever since the world ended," he sings unhappily, "I don't go out as much." But the album's sharpest impact comes from the more personal and focused songs, "Puttin' Up with Me," "Gettin' There," "I'm Alive" and particularly "I Looked in the Mirror," a painfully acute rumination on age and loss whose jaunty rhythm helps undercut any hint of sentimentality.

Allison's sharp lyrics shouldn't obscure his genius as a singer and player. The fluid jerkiness of his skewed swing turns each song into an exercise in bluesy surrealism; it is amazing that he finds musicians who can keep in step with his off-kilter rhythms. This album boasts a terrifically simpatico rhythm section (bassist Dennis Irwin and drummer Tom Whaley) and first-rate solos from saxists Arthur Blythe, Bennie Wallace and Bob Malach. Here's hoping Mose never mellows out; as things get worse, he only seems to get better. (RS 519)

STEVE FUTTERMAN