Though James (aka Jim) Guthrie had refined his songcraft quite a bit between his first and second solo records, it was nothing compared to the leap made on
Now More Than Ever. Quite likely a lot of that is due to the fact that all of the songs here are recorded with multiple musicians instead of just Guthrie himself goofing around with a four-track recorder or his Playstation, but it certainly doesn't hurt that instead of being give the big old rock treatment, the songs here have been bolstered by a string section. True, when you add strings to pop music you run a real risk of winding up with an overblown and pretentious mess, but it's been handled very tastefully here, and the end result is an album that has all of the elements necessary to be a pop classic. If anything is holding it back from that goal, it's probably the pervasive sense of melancholy throughout -- it's a bit of a downer to listen to the album all the way through -- but then again, that never stopped
Beck's
Sea Change. Once you get to the end, past all of the downcast songs, you're treated to the upbeat, ukulele-driven closing number, where Guthrie shows off his skewed lyrical sense by singing a love song to someone, but then turning around and asking "there is still one catch to all of this, do you exist?" It's the perfect capper to a fantastic album. ~ Sean Carruthers