Marshall Crenshaw isn't a household name--in fact, he isn't close to being a household name, and that's a shame for reasons other than the obvious (i.e., that a talented man is being denied the acclaim that's rightfully his, which happens too often to get upset about any more). Once you're familiar with Crenshaw's style, you hear it all over the place, and not just on the oldies stations playing the artists that are his primary inspiration. A big chunk of today's pop-rock artists owes something to Crenshaw's winsome melodicism, from the Bodeans to the late Toad the Wet Sprocket (who sounded so much like Crenshaw they ought to be paying him royalties). So while lesser artists rake in gold records with a pop style that Marshall Crenshaw already perfected ages ago on his first album, the man himself keeps quietly making new music that practically nobody buys.

Not that you'll ever hear a peep of this from Crenshaw himself. Whatever angst he may feel about his career or his life in general is kept firmy out of his songs, where all is warm, joyous, and usually in a major key. That manifestly applies to his latest release, #447 (actually only his ninth), so named as a tongue-in-cheek "not ANOTHER Marshall Crenshaw album!" joke to his audience. Anyone who thinks the title betrays any sort of complaint or frustration is directed to read this paragraph again.

For everyone else, #447 is as tuneful as you'd expect, if not a little more so. It begins in flashy style with the aptly-named "Opening," a brief exercise in punchy horn-rock that at one point nearly disappears in a swirl of tape effects. The first song proper, "Dime a Dozen Guy," is vintage Crenshaw; the title by itself tells you everything you need to know about his unassuming, regular-guy musical persona. "He's not good looking/At least I don't think so," sings the recently jilted lover, at a loss to explain how the titular schlumpf managed to displace him from his girlfriend's side. The song manages a few twists and turns--the middle section is cool and cheerful, in contrast to the doomy verses--but it's with the next track, "Television Light," that things get good. The melody descends sadly as the singer walks the dark streets, musing about the love he has lost:

What I wouldn't wish for
Nearly came true
To throw your love away was what I didn't want to do
It's written on my heart
The way I feel for you
To make your bitter tears fall was what I didn't want to do
What I didn't want to do

Add a heartwrenching fiddle to the mix, and you have a beautiful, melancholy pop classic, one that stands alongside the best in the Crenshaw songbook.

Changing the mood from sad to gladness is "Glad Goodbye," a moving-on-out-of-here song with a spacious arrangement and some tasteful mellotron embellishment. "Tell Me All About It" is, after "Television Light," probably the track most likely to join Crenshaw's hall of fame. Like much of his best work, its lyric tells a story more complex than its cheerful melody would suggest. The relationship here is plainly in trouble, and its dissection sparks the album's best lyric: "And now I do believe/Just like Adam learned from Eve/people can hide things up their sleeve/even when naked." As the trouble becomes more evident, the demand contained in the title suddenly doesn't seem such a good idea: "On second thought, maybe I don't want you/to tell me all about it."

There are other good songs--"Truly Madly Deeply," "Right There in Front of Me," the vaguely menacing "Ready Right Now"--and a few instrumentals as well, some taken from the television documentary for which Crenshaw recently wrote incidental music. While none of them grab you by the hair, they do bring some interesting color to the mix, particularly "Eydie's Tune," a torchy, cry-in-your-beer composition with fine guitar playing. (The tastefully brief solos on his songs often fail to suggest the great guitar player that Crenshaw really is.) And you have to love an instrumental called "West of Bald Knob" for its title alone.

#447 is both a fun record and a mature one, its grown-up concerns well-complemented by a production that pins a firm, warm foundation under every song, leaving room in the rest of the arrangement for an eclectic assemblage of fiddle, mellotron, synths, and more guitar sounds than you could ever pin names to. A worthy addition to the Crenshaw catalog--and thus, a worthy addition to your collection.