Simply a masterpiece any way you look at (listen to) it. This is songwriting at it's best - pushing the boundaries of both pop music and art in general, yet thoroughly enjoyable to listen to. This album is one of the extremely rare cases where the music is intellectually and artistically ambitious and at the same time perfectly entertaining. I discovered this album by (happy) accident 7Simply a masterpiece any way you look at (listen to) it. This is songwriting at it's best - pushing the boundaries of both pop music and art in general, yet thoroughly enjoyable to listen to. This album is one of the extremely rare cases where the music is intellectually and artistically ambitious and at the same time perfectly entertaining. I discovered this album by (happy) accident 7 years ago, and have since noticed that many people refer to it as a "lost classic", which is probably the best way to describe it in two words. It's like a great novel, or great collection of short stories, with the emotional power of music used to its full degree, by someone who is clearly one of the best songwriters of our times. I'm making the reference to literature here because I don't understand why this album isn't more known, and the only reason I have come up with is the same reason that "people don't read books anymore" as the saying goes, so I guess some people find anything with more than 3 basic chords and 1 basic hook too challenging - however, if you consider your intellectual ambitions being higher than those of a couch potato, you would probably enjoy this album more than you could possibly predict (I sure did). I was trying to present the case here for you to listen to the album and discover the music for yourself, as the actual combination of songs on it is way too big a topic for me to try and write about in 5000 characters or less. It's about so many things (life, love, politics etc) with the common thread being a genuine (and successful) attempt to describe those in the form of singer-songwriter pop music. The word "pop" is relevant here because this album is really not hard to understand or enjoy - like most classic novels aren't actually either - it just all takes slightly more brain power than listening to hook-based commercial pop, which I'm sure actually destroys brain cells... This is the "healthy" option that also tastes good, very rare in the area of art as it is in the area of food. So, if you haven't heard this album, sorry but you've been missing out - but better to find it out now than keep on missing out - forget about the "must-hear" bands of the week of NME/Pitchfork (which if you've noticed, keep changing week by week, in a completely illogical fashion), but this actually is a must-hear album and a must-hear artist.… Expand