Consumer Guide Album

Todd Snider: High, Lonesome and Then Some [Thirty Tigers/Aimless, 2025]
"Granted is what you've been taking me for," the perpetually unreliable, regularly lovelorn Rahm Emanuel fave and substance connoisseur is on this evidence spiritually undiminished. But that's not to suggest he sounds hale or anything like that, especially since he was recently hospitalized in the wake of an alleged physical attack outside his Salt Lake City hotel at the start of the tour he has now cancelled. For nine tracks that clock in at 42:31 he sings his songs of emotional displacement and comic woe, which here follow one called "The Human Condition" with one called "Unforgivable," which is not actually the "worst story ever told" as its subtitle claims, well before things get to "All she wanted me to be was a halfway decent person/But I had always been afraid of change." "It's Hard to Be Happy" speaks for itself. "Stoner Yodel #2" allows as how jealousy keeps him alive. "Older Women" wishes his girlfriend would do the introductions before the title song comes along to reprise the bleak descriptive "totally estranged." But before you throw up your hands and go thataway, let me note that on this album Snider's unvirtuosic but irrepressible guitar should be enough to keep you listening. A−