Aimless

Todd Snider bestowed the title Agnostic Hymns & Stoner Fables on his twelfth album for a reason. The songs come from a thoroughly contrarian pointof-view and let listeners who identify with underdogs (i.e. most of us) in on the joke. For nearly two decades, Snider’s been a consistently witty, politically provocative blues-talking folk-rocker. Here, he plays the part of a winking, pot-stirring anarchist. “In the Beginning,” a sung-spoken story, the sneering sing-along “New York Banker” and the jarring combination of dystopian lyrics and gentle jazz of “Precious Little Miracles” are dark, funny and, ultimately, very cathartic. On this album, Snider takes the scruffiness that people love him for to its musical extreme. Sometimes looseness amplifies a song’s impact; other times, things threaten to go off the rails. But nobody can accuse this guy of playing it safe.