A BRAND NEW PAIR OF SHOES

Roadhouse Blues
You'd be forgiven if you'd assumed this car had pitted and left the race, but then out of nowhere: "Keep your eyes on the road, your hands upon the wheel." Good advice. And then the verite "Well, I woke up this morning, I got myself a beer." We might just have something here...

Waiting for the Sun
Gotta love the old we'll-come-up-with-a-song-to-match-the-album-title-in-a-couple-of-albums gambit. Fellow traveler Julian Cope pulled the same trick years later with World Shut Your Mouth. I suppose in retrospect it's a minor miracle that the Bunnymen didn't do it too. The kicker is that it's better than anything on the album of the same name.

You Make Me Real
See what you can do when you ditch the boho mystic crap and have some fun? Plus it has the weight of fun that's been singed by fire.

Peace Frog/Blue Sunday
A mash up. PF seems like sort of a clearinghouse for some poems that had been sitting and gathering moss, and BS is a slight, innocuous ballad. Both benefit from the general reinvigoration that's on display here.

Ship of Fools
I always liked the way this and Land Ho! sounded back to back, but I used to need to wait for the leader tape to run out on side one before the auto reverse kicked in on my cassette player and started up side two. So here CDs, which have dulled the dramatic impact of many a side closer, aid in the thematic flow.

Land Ho!
An odd little bedtime story/nursery rhyme, with verve if nothing else.

The Spy
All Music Guide is telling me this is 4:17. Feels longer. Not all bad, to be fair-- "I know ev'rything. Ev'rything you do. Ev'rywhere you go. Ev'ryone you know" has some warmth to it-- but pretty turgid overall.

Queen of the Highway
I can never quite figure out if this is underrated or if I have an irrational attachment to it. "Formless/Hope it can continue a little while longer" had great resonance to me during a summer I knew I was pissing away, which I knew would have to end, which I hoped would never end...

Indian Summer
And this put a nice atmospheric capper on it.

Maggie McGill
Where earlier blues efforts were callow, and sounded unearned, this is starting to sound "real" if you will. It's the sound of a man who's come through a crash course in self-hatred and self-abuse, and emerged with a lasting mark, one that speaks of a well-earned humility, but also a growing sense of self-worth...