Hiwatt (Stomp)

Graham Brown is like an old Volvo. He’s indefatigable, sturdy, manufactured with more care than average, and perhaps a little boxy. He might also be the subject of his own “Invisible”, a brightly rendered tribute to all those nice guys (and gals) out there who go about their lives without being noticed all that much. Brown has been around for a long time, stoically releasing album after album of beautifully crafted country rock to a small but steadfast audience. You can hear what he does best on opener “Bust Your Lip”, which isn’t a million miles from “Casino Queen”–era Wilco.

But at 18 tracks, and not quite enough variety, Hiwatt is definitely a haul. Sadly, this means that stronger songs like the jangly “Take It Away” get lost amid half-assed efforts like “Rollin Stoner” and “Long Time Comin”. Matters are much improved when guitar and organ duke it out inside the more adventurous dimensions of “Potions”, and in the lovely “Somedays”, which seems to have its Rhodes-dappled heart in Haight-Ashbury as much as anything.

If Brown’s last album with the Prairie Dogs, Do What You Should, was less convincing the faster and louder it got, Hiwatt certainly fixes that problem. “Gonna Be a While”, “Yonder Way”, and the barbed and angry “Ambush” are as snarly as Brown’s ever sounded, only more so. If it were 20 minutes shorter, he might have been sitting on his best record yet. As it is, Brown’s plonked himself inside a clunker with too many unnecessary features, and not enough design economy.