A former keyboard player in the vaguely Catherine Wheel-ish contemporary Christian group Starflyer 59, Richard Swift struck out on his own at the turn of the decade. His first two records, Walking Without Effort and , came out on as a double album in 2005 on Secretly Canadian, and he's been putting out music in dribs and drabs ever since then. All of it has been perfectly competent but a little dull, suggesting an MOR-indie mind-meld of Ron Sexsmith, Michael Penn, and Andrew Bird. On last year's head-turning EP, however, Swift switched things up, ditching the midtempo piano ballads for strutting, ersatz blue-eyed soul and warbling in a killer, outrageously goofy Frank Zappa-meets-Bobby Darrin falsetto over loving recreations of Spencer Davis Group oldies. The EP was slight but unexpectedly winning, and it signaled a shift in direction that sets the stage nicely for the grander affair that is , his first proper full-length since 2007's . Wisely keeping the looseness he found on , Swift spruces everything else up with the sort of painstaking classicist touches that overly ambitious singer/songwriters have spent hours in the studio refining since at least Todd Rundgren's .