David Baerwald

It’s a relief to know that, despite his gaunt, artfully haggard appearance on the sleeve of his first album in nine years, David Baerwald hasn’t gone hungry. His new label, Lost Highway — home to Lucinda Williams and Ryan Adams — points out in its promotional materials for Here Comes the New Folk Underground that Baerwald has written for or collaborated with plenty of musicians during the past decade, as well as composed material for movies. And he’s probably still getting royalty checks for his substantial contributions to Sheryl Crow’s 1994 debut.

But Baerwald, whose 1986 David and David album with former partner David Ricketts sounds far less dated and far more prescient than most releases of its time, has become so reliable a credibility lender for other acts that the cold-blooded canniness of his best writing seems depleted on Underground. A recasting of his furious 1993 disc Triage, whose brittle narrators composed a virtual catalog of depravity, would have sounded forced, yet Underground doesn’t refine Baerwald’s hardscrabble approach as much as update its sonic frame. Despite its title, the expensive-sounding disc largely surrounds Baerwald’s bruised vocals with programmed touches and New Orleans horns that drain his songs of their usual organic fervor. Regardless of production, though, Baerwald’s music on many songs here is simply too drowsy, leaving his still-sharp lyrics bedridden.

The exceptions — especially the cool banjo breeze “Why” and the addictive minor-key love march “Me and My Girl” (which rhymes shopping mall with Nembutal but still manages a kind of high Motown romance) — make this essential for Baerwald fans and parolees everywhere. But Underground‘s best moments mostly encourage the hope that Baerwald won’t be silent again for so long, at least without assembling something more persuasive.