With Wreckless Eric back on Stiff Records for the first time in 30 years, it was easy for various listeners to say he was back on form as well. Ha! He never lost form. Indeed, the chain of albums that divides Big Smash! way back when, from Wreckless Eric & Amy Rigby today, represents one of the most startling adroit voyages in modern rock, as the occasionally novelty minded auteur behind “Waxworks,” “Personal Hygiene,” and “Pop Song” developed such a weary eye for modern nonsense that civilization itself should have hung its head in shame. Blessed with a tongue so tart you could serve it for dessert, Eric long ago established himself among the most important songwriters of his generation and, sharing the spotlight with a conspirator who seems just as brusque as he is, he maintains that proud status here. Songs are divided unequally between the pair, Rigby writes five, Eric two, and the partnership meets for three more. But every one hovers around the same darkened corners of discomfort and damage, and though Eric all but threatens autobiography with the ferocious “The Downside of Being a Fuck-Up,” you know he wouldn’t have it any other way. As usual with latter-day Eric albums, Wreckless Eric & Amy Rigby is not the easiest listen, sparse and Spartan, with the harmonies not so much layered against one another, as splattered across your ears. But dissolution quickly dissolves into compulsion, and “Another Drive in Saturday” is the best slice of drifting, haunting nostalgia you’ve heard since Bobby Goldsboro recalled “Summer the First Time,” or Eric himself revisited “Lureland.” The result is a masterpiece, and a master class in what songwriting is really all about. Songs. – Dave Thompson