Consumer Guide Album

Todd Snider: First Agnostic Church of Hope and Wonder [Aimless, 2021]
The ramshackle production so fundamental to Snider's shtick doesn't transmute into gold here the way it did on Cash Cabin Sessions. It takes multiple listens to register the plain yet eloquent and even witty John Prine tribute. "Battle Hymn of the Album" performs the essential function of putting John Brown's name on repeat without availing itself of the sacred melody Julia Ward Howe lifted so pragmatically. In fact, the only true noticer here is "The Great Pacific Garbage Patch," about the two Texases worth of discarded plastic now floating in Terra's largest ocean. But who else you got who's likely to wonder "If faith moves mountains what's it take to leave them alone?" or opine that "We are fractions of equations of illusions of reality"? Or let the pastor of the title church wheedle and hold forth? B+