The Streets, Everything Is Borrowed

Mike Skinner may be big on concepts, but his lyrics have always been rooted in the everyday. Each of his first three albums, credited to the Streets, had a basic overarching theme: 2002's Original Pirate Material was the introduction, "a day in the life of a geezer," as he put it; 2004's A Grand Don't Come for Free chronicled an ordinary bloke's travails after losing a sizable sum. Even 2006's The Hardest Way to Make an Easy Living, which dealt with the high life's aftereffects, made much of fame's drudgery — less "poor me" than an examination of the way success swaps one set of day-to-day priorities out for another.

But Everything Is Borrowed is where Skinner gets philosophical. Many of these songs wrestle with ideas of the "Who are we?" variety rather than detail the minutiae of his (or his character's) surroundings. What's more surprising is that it sounds like such a natural progression, in part because Skinner's always-present sense of humor nudges his musings forward. "I love the rain on my scars," he declares at one point on the album's title track; on the next song he overdubs himself to resemble a laddish choir, exulting, "I want to go to heaven for the weather." If he's going to think out loud about religion ("Alleged Legends") or evolution ("The Way of the Dodo") this way, he's obviously determined to have fun doing it.

Musically, Everything Is Borrowed isn't as startling as the first two albums; by definition it couldn't be, since those titles helped to redefine hip-hop in uniquely English terms. His cadences have relaxed a little; his verbiage has less herky-jerk in it, and his choruses tend toward the sing-songy. Everything also emphasizes more intricate arrangements for live instrumentation, and while its expansiveness doesn't always work, Skinner can still grab your attention with well-placed touches, such as the simple, looped guitar and kick drum of "The Sherry End" and the line of pizzicato strings underpinning "The Escapist." The latter, the album's closing track, gets positively metaphysical: "These walls were never there/Nor the ceiling, nor the chair." These songs, though, are definitely clear and present.