Pete Yorn lacks the literary gifts of his idol Bruce Springsteen, so it's not always obvious when he's saying something deep. "Velcro Shoes" starts as a nostalgic look back at '80s childhood: go-karts, peanut butter sandwiches, new-fangled sneakers without laces, even a twin-guitar riff in homage to Undercover-era Rolling Stones. But there's no mythic grandeur here, no redemption — just random images, dots that don't connect. By the time he gets to the line, "So many happy memories," his tone has curdled into sarcasm.

Yorn's fifth album packs the disillusionment of Darkness on the Edge of Town into ragged anthems that draw on punk, '70s metal, early Beatles and even late-'50s R&B; recorded in five days with producer Frank Black, it's a brash rebuttal to last year's fussier and more subdued Back and Fourth. Song after song explores the diminishing returns of having it all. "Paradise Cove I" has a title that evokes a rum commercial, but the babe frolicking on the beach has a corroded heart: "You want so bad to have meaning, but you're empty and draining," Yorn accuses. In "Rock Crowd," a singer tries to preserve his audience's fantasy vision of him by keeping his loneliness to… read more »