Agnostic Hymns & Stoner FablesAimless Records ****

Todd Snider's albums are always a hoot; there are few American songwriters with a tongue as cutting, telling and humorous. But this collection is different. The music is angry, uneasy; dirty, ragged guitar and scraping violin seep into his East Nashville bluesy reverie, as on the rap Digger Dave's Crazy Woman Blues. There are softer moments (Brenda, his oddball tribute to Jagger/Richard), but mostly Snider is spoiling for a fight. His website states he paints a world "where begging turns to mugging, where investment turns to ruin, where babies grow into felons, where honesty is blunt trauma". Blame it on the bankers (New York Banker), but this is a soundtrack of disgust at a world gone to hell. As he says on Big Finish: "It ain't the despair that gets you, it's the hope." toddsnider.net

Download tracks:Digger Dave's Crazy Woman Blues, Big Finish