Jim White - Drill A Hole In That Substrate and Tell Me What You See - Luaka Bop 68089-90055-2

I'm a big fan of Jim White's two previous albums, No Such Place and Wrong-Eyed Jesus. They're full of strange imagery and stories, no doubt the product of the hard and tragic times he went through before David Byrne took him on his label. For instance, he used to wake up handcuffed to a fence in Mississippi after his girlfriend had taken his car; or because there was a vengeful ghost at the foot of his bed; or to find that his lover had stabbed him and he was bleeding to death in a forest.

So I was initially disappointed to find on the first track of this album that he now awakes to a "sweet summer rain". In bed. Without any spectres. It almost sounds as though he's happy. Then he bounces back with the lonely picture of a phone box in heaven (but no-one's calling) and he tells us that we can't get there on borrowed wings, stolen from sleeping angels. Taken out of context, this might sound trite but the songs work. He may have mellowed, but he's got more musicality and poetry in his little finger than most musicians have in their whole body and this is a great listen. Buy all three albums is my advice.