In the '80s Marshall Crenshaw could find a bittersweet shadow of melancholy on the sunniest day. He was a pop-rock classicist imbued with the verities of smart but not intellectualized words and melodious music, supple and never wimpy as he addressed the human heart. On his first album in several years, Crenshaw's core sound remains intact, sometimes delivered with a harder guitar edge than in the past. Recorded in several studios with several producers, Jaggedland is a bit uneven. But at his best, Crenshaw continues to blend influences from the '60s into a sound unmistakably his own.
