Consumer Guide Album

Todd Snider: The Excitement Plan [Yep Roc, 2009]
For a principled slacker like Snider, diffidence is an aesthetic principle, but here it tends to obscure some affecting little songs. Slackers need whatever help they can get wherever they can get it. They also pack less punch as sidewalk philosophers than as barroom storytellers--e.g. "Unorganized Crime," where a job gets done, or "Corpus Christi Bay," who has one. B+