Jason Lytle

For most of this decade, Jason Lytle led the lovely Grandaddy, a sort of Radiohead for trailer parks. Coming from dead-end Modesto, California, dressed in trucker caps and flannel, Lytle leavened his sci-fi space pop with a downer blue-collar vibe. When Grandaddy sounded forlorn, which it often did, the song’s subject was typically a robot or office drone, which somehow both lightened the mood and, upon further thought, made things more depressing. The guy knows how to strike a balance between ennui and bliss.

Now, the high-tech hick has picked up his keyboards and ELO albums and moved to Montana. Consequently, his music—which still sounds just like Elliott Smith fronting the Alan Parsons Project—has taken on a new layer. Lytle clearly sounds reborn from mountain living, yet his songwriting’s shift to the first person makes us think he needs a hug from a big, slobbery dog.

On his post-dropping-out-of-society solo debut, Yours Truly, the Commuter, the heartbroken hermit’s built an android backing band to bash out sad songs in the garage. A handful of songs absolutely stun: the title track, “Brand New Sun” and “Birds Encouraged Him.” On the latter, a deadbeat kid hears songbirds talking him off suicide for “one more night.” Lytle sighs, “Why, oh why, don’t you even try,” over minor acoustic chords and soaring synths. It’s gutting.

Unfortunately, the rest of the record feels like a lonely dude tinkering around, striking mood more than melody. It’s evocative of 21st-century America, drawing up empty, rotting suburbs where IBM salarymen once lived and tumbleweed made of Christmas tinsel blows. We just wish he got better pop-radio reception up there in the glacial valleys to remember his love of hooks.

Lytle opens for Explosions in the Sky at Congress Thursday 2.

Download Yours Truly, The Commuter at iTunes | Buy it from Amazon.com

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