Darren Hanlon - Little Chills (2004)

Former fourth Lucksmith and ex-Simpletons guitarist Darren Hanlon understands that the difference between simple and simple-headed is, quite literally, wit. Like his aforementioned countryfolk, the longtime Australian musician has a knack for quirky tunefulness, good-naturedly ambitious rhymes and tingly everyday details, shared over shopworn guitars and embellished with piano, violin or the occasional toy instrument. For his second solo album, Little Chills, Hanlon soft-focuses on another set of unembarrassed odes to simple pleasures, this time with knob-twiddling from Calexico producer Craig Schumacher.

Hanlon revels in the mundane with the childish exuberance of Jonathan Richman. On one of the album's punkier tracks, Hanlon laments the dearth of songs about his favorite indoor sport: "Can't some DJ play a squash song in their bracket?" he asks. He indulges in Lucksmithian weather puns on "Winter Takes Fall", starting the day in shorts but "having second thoughts" (the accent makes the rhyme, natch). He visits every train station in town. He loves vinyl-shopping so much he almost spoils the album with cliché-- "your life's a film, who writes the score?"-- before redeeming himself with a panoptic closing incantation, "The record stays still/ While the world revolves around it."

The goosebumps of real-life romance have been a Hanlon theme dating back to dizzy, banjo-laden 2000 hit "Falling Aeroplanes". It's been 21 years since Billy Bragg released "A New England", but Hanlon's love songs still echo his former tourmate's cleverness, if not his righteous indignation. On "A to Z", the clear choice for first single, Hanlon asks his sweetie to read him all the names in the phone book-- "both Christian and sur-"-- and sing "the entire Beatles Anthology/ From 'All My Loving' to 'Yellow Submarine'". Any quibbles over his exclusion of John Lennon's Brian Epstein portrait (plus, bloody "Yesterday"!) would miss the point. Then "I Wish That I Was Beautiful for You" averts its own potential cheesiness with vivid specificity: "It looked as though the highway wore eyeliner," Hanlon murmurs.

For all his aw-shucks regular-guyness, though, it's Hanlon's oddities that-- as he himself might rhyme-- make his quiddity. It's the thrash coda of heavy-metal T-shirt memento "Brooklyn Bridge", the perversely slow and distant opener "Wrong Turn", the "half a dozen eggplants/ Or six aubergines". It's the self-abbreviating party ruckus in "The Unmade Bed", followed by Hanlon's simple, witty mission statement: "These are my principles/ If you don't like them I've got others/ This is my opinion/ If you don't agree, I've got big brothers."