When Bob Schneider's first album Lonelyland slipped into my hand, I'll have to admit that I never really gave it a fair listen. I got ahold of it about the same time Pete Yorn's first album dropped and since I preferred Pete to Bob I didn't give Lonelyland much of a chance. Bob's second release I'm Good Now I have given a fair chance and as a result I'm happy to report that it's a pretty fair record.

Bob pretty much follows in the footsteps of most good singer/songwriters and there are several songs that stand out. The problem is that the album lacks any sort of cohesiveness from song to song. No real identity emerges, because, though the songs are tightly arranged and varied in style and dynamics, lyrically he's all over the place and even with the aid of the liner notes you're not always certain what the hell he's talking about. Sometimes all this verbosity and rapid-fire wordplay pays off with a smile or a bit of observational humor - but you really don't connect with it on a lyrical level.

Songwise there are enough hooky melodies and so forth, but there are also a handful of songs that sound too much like Train. "Capn Kirk" for example, is pretty much a knock-off of "Meet Virginia." I've read up on the sessions that culminated in this record, enough to know that he broke free of his contract with Universal over a dispute about how many songs to include on this release. Bob had 23 recorded and was lobbying for most of them. Ultimately he landed at Shockarama Records, where they talked him into the Kill Bill approach. I'm Good Now has 13 tracks and evidently the balance of the songs that didn't make the cut will follow on an album he intends to release in November.

I'll at least give this record a strong 3 out of 5 rating, because there are a lot of rousing moments of tightly wound heartland rock, some pretty straight-forward and some kind of lean and rootsy. The second to last track "Getting Better" has a funky Island Groove that has kind of a "lime in the coconut" Harry Nilsson thing going. In general terms you could safely say that Bob veers about too much for this album to work as a whole - one minute he's Dan Fogelberg and the next Bruce Springsteen. However, and this is one hell of a big however, there is a bit of a hidden track called "Love is Everywhere," that is probably my favorite song of the year. It's this lovely slow ballad that sounds like something Ron Sexsmith and Rufus Wainwright wrote the music to and handed it over for John Prine to add the lyrics. If you have downloading capabilities - check out this song if nothing else and tell me I'm wrong. Best song of the year.