In a rare sleeve note, Jack Hardy explains that this, his ninth album, was recorded in his small Greenwich Village apartment, direct to two-track tape, thus bringing his usual D.I.Y. approach, which has found him releasing his own records for years, to the actual process of record-making. The listener will find that distinction less audible than several other alterations in Hardy's usual approach. The compressed recording time may have focused the effort, as Hardy recorded with a touring band prominently featuring violinist Lisa Gutkin and harmony singer Wendy Beckerman for a sound reminiscent of Bob Dylan's Desire. And the substitution of drummer Tom Lenahan for Howie Wyeth makes for a more streamlined rhythm; Lenahan is more driving, as opposed to Wyeth's bomb-filled gutbucket style. But the biggest difference from previous efforts is in Hardy's songwriting: The songs are shorter, and while Hardy may never be accused of directness or simplicity, lyrically he is less concerned here with arcane subjects and more with conventional issues of romance. "The same old song/On the radio/He done her wrong/And she had to go, " he sings in "Trees Bear Witness," parodying the usual approach to such material, and in contrast he can be painfully intimate in the lovely "Forget-Me-Not" and "The Blue Garden" and just plain painful in the soul-baring album closer "Blue on the Bottom." This would be a good album for newcomers to Hardy, leaving his more discursive earlier efforts until later.