The Perfect Face

"She wants a cowboy," Arthur Dodge wryly states on the opening track of The Perfect Face, "She wants the real thing, but all of them are gone." Indeed, this "she" is barking up the wrong tree, fixated on a man who merely plays a cowboy on TV. There again, you can forgive her confusion, for Dodge (unlike the character in his song) epitomizes every bit of the wrangler stereotype: he's taciturn, laconic, a touch ironic, and not to be rushed. Perfect Face clocks in at under 40 minutes, but Dodge is in no hurry. "Need to get out of this town, put the pedal to the metal and just keep it down," he declares, but never does, on "Waiting for the World," allowing time to slow to a crawl, and the song to spin into eternity. Dodge's superbly languid delivery and his songs' wonderful, almost limpid, arrangements, confuse one's senses, helping the album to feel almost twice as long as it actually is. Thus listeners have plenty of time to dwell on Perfect Face's many romantic entanglements and Dodge's wry, at times sanguine lyrics, and appreciate the luminescent music within. Although now working as a solo artist, all of Dodge's former Horsefeather cohorts put in an appearance, helping to flesh out the numbers and elucidate the song's many moods and styles.

The country twang that sneaks onto "Sidewalk," the sublime guitar interplay of "Ides of March," the elegant keyboards that twinkle across "Wet Paint" and many other tracks, the standup piano that subtly tinges the timeless tale of country love gone wrong on "Home," or the '60s harmonies that sweeten "Black Blue Jeans," all enrich the incandescent songs. The sparse arrangements and pristine production accentuate these small details, painting them large on an otherwise spare but atmospheric canvas. Once again crossing genres from folk to country to pop and back again, Dodge's latest is arguably his best yet.