Pitchfork

Jack Logan's one of those guys that stumbled onto a recording contract accidentally. Minneapolis resident Peter Jesperson (best known for working with the Replacements and the Twin/Tone record label) had been hearing about Logan from his rockstar friends in Athens, Georgia. He contacted Logan and asked him to send some material. It took Logan a good, long time to compile a bunch of his old four-track tapes, but he finally got around to it. And when he did, the package wasn't a small one: in all, he sent Jesperson more than 600 songs, 42 of which became Logan's debut release, 1994's brilliant Bulk.

In January of 1996, Logan appeared with his first collection of music recorded in a studio, Mood Elevator. The album was somewhat hit-or-miss, but on the songs where Logan and his band Liquor Cabinet had it together, it all sounded awesome.

Little Private Angel is by no means a perfect album-- there are more than a few instances where the vocal harmonies seem excessive, and are, in some cases, mixed slightly louder than the vocals singing the predominant melody. Also, the opener, "Four Men in a Car" is incredibly repetitive, and the sound effects on the otherwise terrific "Rained Like Hell" sound more like bacon frying than rain coming down.

The record has a few bombs, too-- the over-happy sounds of "Fire on the Boat" come off like Jimmy Buffett on ecstasy; "220 Volts" sounds like a lost b-side to Matthew Wilder's 1980s reggae-crossover hit "Break My Stride", and the horrible country track "Marchin' with the Saints" is remarkably bland by Logan's standards.

But for every disappointing moment on Little Private Angel, there's a great one. The title track is the best Elvis Costello song Logan's ever written; "Frozen Rope" is America's "Horse with No Name" if it'd been about baseball, and the aforementioned "Rained Like Hell" is Logan at the top of his game.

Jack Logan's supposedly going to begin selling his songs over the Internet, so it's possible (though unlikely) that this could be his final CD release. If so, it's not a bad note to end on. But I'd prefer a box set of all 600 Bulk tracks.