Laconic California indie minstrel 's fifth offering is a thrift shop photo album filled with histories that may or may not have been, dust bowl carnival rides, and slices of sunlit Western so thick that you need a broom to sweep up the bits that fall off of the knife. makes records that sound like he just wandered in off the street with a few friends and hit the record button, but what would feel lazy and unfocused in less confident hands comes off like a tutorial in old-school songwriting and performance that hearkens back to the days of and if they had had access to a modern-day studio. is not only 's best effort yet, it's one of the best records of the year. While his distinctive half-second-delay drawl assumes its usual position as the ghostly broadcast from a more sepia-toned time, the production is far grander than on his previous outings. Opener sounding for what it's worth like a cross between ' and an outtake from 's , kicks things off with sneaky keyboard strings that fade into the real deal, reaching elegiac heights by the diminutive track's end. A catchy cover of features guest vocalist breathing fire into the choruses with her trademark howl, the rowdy sounds like a version of and the peerless with its brilliant refrain of "She's got one magic trick/just one and that's it/she disappears," kicks off a suite of tunes that snake their way through to the album's end like a shot of Apple Jack. Like early , knows how to make sloppy sound succinct, and it's that magic mix of earnestness and apathy that makes the secret bounty that it is. ~ James Christopher Monger