Can You Fly got him a major-label deal, naturally, and almost as naturally, 1994's This Perfect World sounded a little stiff, too conscious of its commercial destiny. So I'm relieved to report that on Never Home, Johnston's matched gifts for the memorable tune, the telling phrase, and the painful situation all reassert themselves. New producer Danny Kortchmar, who goes back to Carole King and James Taylor, is an impeccably catchy studio guitarist better-suited to Johnston's sensibility than This Perfect World's Butch Vig. Not every song is a keeper, but more than half are, and nothing goes by without waving hello.

Always partial to the representational, Johnston has gotten more literal as he's mastered his craft--"On the Way Out" is really about a shoplifter, "Western Skies" really about a pilot's son who won't take the plane because his dad died in one. Significantly, though, "Western Skies" is also about a warm, strong marriage. Since like all his colleagues Johnston keeps returning to the theme of troubled love, give him credit for making sure that not every relationship he writes about is merely doomed. On "He Wasn't Murdered" a guy who walks out ends up calling home; in "Seventies Girl" a guy who's hanging in there is determined to quench that old flame; in "Gone To See the Fire" a gal hasn't left that pyromaniac yet, although she probably will (and should). And "If It's True" is a heartbreaker. The story of a pregnancy scare that could go any which way, it's jam-packed with enough emotion and uncertainty to convince any reasonable tortured teen that singer-songwriters have their place after all.

Spin, Mar. 1997