Vic Chesnutt – Left To His Own Devices

Over a recording career that dates to 1990 and now spans nine full-length albums, the gleeful gadfly of Athens has proven himself both a songwriter of immense talent and a slave to a particularly restive muse. These traits have yielded a handful of minor masterpieces — darkly comic records that gleam with mischief and glint with rage, their songs packed with uncommon observation and spiked with bitter humor — and an equal if not greater number of near-misses.

In the latter category you’ll find albums such as Drunk (too muddled), collaborations with Widespread Panic (Brute’s Nine High A Pallet, too greasy) and Lambchop (The Salesman And Bernadette, too smooth), the little-heard Merriment (too modest), and now Left To His Own Devices.

The new disc is basically a batch of home-recorded demos, and its fuzzy fidelity recalls the early albums Chesnutt made with producer Michael Stipe. But though Little and West Of Rome sounded rough, they packed an emotional punch that Devices rarely attempts to deliver. There’s merit in the murk: the frantic falsetto of “Deadline”, the tuneful extended metaphor of “Very Friendly Lighthouses”, and the contrast between the stinging irony of “We Should Be So Brave” and “In Amongst The Millions” and the joyful affirmation of “Squeak” and “Look At Me”.

But it hardly seems worth Chesnutt’s time to squander his clever cruelty on cheap chuckles such as “Wounded Prince”, and it’s doubtful many listeners will find the half-baked likes of “Caper”, “Cash”, and “Thought You Were My Friend” deserving of their time.