If [wimpLink artistId="3529879"]Gary Jules[/wimpLink]' debut album was a superb collection of songs (a few of them dating back to his late teenage years), [wimpLink albumId="239242547"]Trading Snakeoil for Wolftickets[/wimpLink] is a stunning, focused follow-up. Reflective and melancholy, dusk-colored and dreamlike, it finds supreme repose through songs of somber experience. Composed in the concentrated two-year span after being unceremoniously dropped from A&M and recorded essentially on his own, the album is a wellspring of songcraft that charts a course through tangled emotions. [wimpLink artistId="3529879"]Jules[/wimpLink]' voice betrays many things -- hurt, disappointment, and uncertainty, but also, importantly, recognition -- and the songs find a range of moods, from the joyous, late-night-with-loose-change-in-my-pockets ode "DTLA" to the breathtaking resignation of "No Poetry" and "Something Else." On the surface, little seems to have changed about the music. It is still a fragile but lush wish: the cymbals whisper, and acoustic guitars pick out the delicate melodies while waiting for the occasional, flirtatious reply of soft electric runs. But in every way, [wimpLink artistId="3529879"]Jules[/wimpLink] has grown as an artist. [wimpLink albumId="239242547"]Trading Snakeoil for Wolftickets[/wimpLink] plays out like a song cycle. It documents [wimpLink artistId="3529879"]Jules[/wimpLink]' convoluted relationship with Los Angeles, an adopted home that retains an unrelenting hold over the songwriter, and the music is imbued with the city's spirit. You could even say that Hollywood acts as a character of sorts on the album, both a protagonist and antagonist, sometimes standing at the center of songs, sometimes fading into soft focus behind [wimpLink artistId="3529879"]Jules[/wimpLink]' stories, but always, in some way, casting a shadow. The album moves through vaguely cynical expressions of dejection, toward acceptance, before finally inhabiting a humble, restive place, a personal journey that culminates in "Umbilical Town," on which [wimpLink artistId="3529879"]Jules[/wimpLink] lingers in the past for a few brief moments before letting go of it all. And in the stark ghostliness of [wimpLink artistId="3824"]Tears for Fears[/wimpLink]' "Mad World," hauntingly rearranged as a piano ballad, he comes up with a performance that more than matches the work of [wimpLink artistId="24877"]Cat Stevens[/wimpLink] in terms of solemn, profound beauty, isolation, and depth of searching. [wimpLink albumId="239242547"]Trading Snakeoil for Wolftickets[/wimpLink] takes on a shimmering glow. Gracious and redemptive, it is a rapt, quiescent masterwork. ~ Stanton Swihart