Focus can be a difficult thing to maintain in art. Once you've begun creating something, it's easy to find yourself off on some tangent you never saw coming. It takes a certain amount of discretion, and often, a certain amount of objective distance, to decide which roads to continue down and which ones to abandon. In music, this is, of course, where producers come in. Their job is essentially to stop the artist from getting carried away with a questionable idea and to moderate decisions about direction and material.

Past Sparklehorse efforts have been plagued by a certain lack of focus. This doesn't mean they weren't good records-- in fact, 1998's Good Morning Spider was something of a creative triumph, even in spite of its general disorganization. That said, though, hiring an outside producer (not to mention fully ridding himself of all drug habits) seems to have done Sparklehorse frontman Mark Linkous a great deal of good. Superproducer Dave Fridmann has developed a certain Midas Touch over the years, imbuing nearly every album he works on with a distinctive sonic character, and It's a Wonderful Life has his fingerprints all over it.

The most focused Sparklehorse effort yet, the album flows along with the grace of a river occasionally stirred by a rapid or two. The half-songs and quickly squelched ideas of Linkous' past releases are absent in favor of fully fleshed pieces stuffed full of mellotrons, optigans, orchestrons, and sundry humming keyboards. Only once is its flow is only badly disrupted. (We'll get to that in a second.)

The majority of It's a Wonderful Life brims with electro American gothic ballads and fuzzy purees of lo-fi and hi-fi aesthetics. There aren't really any out-and-out rave-ups like "Pig" or "Happy Man," but a few of the mid-tempo numbers display enough bite for commercial radio play. (I'm asking too much, aren't I?) "Gold Day" snags the ear with a concise melodic hook and some snazzy mellotron flutes. And Linkous' defiantly surrealist approach to lyrics is in full effect here, with all manner of references to smiling babies, organ music, birds, and celestial bodies.

In fact, some of the lyrics are so surreal that it's hard to imagine they're even metaphors for anything. When Linkous implores, "Can you feel the rings of Saturn on your finger?" in the Vic Chesnutt-cast-adrift-in-a-post-modern-sound-collage number "Sea of Teeth," it's hard to believe that there's much hidden meaning behind it. Animal imagery also abounds; bees, poison frogs, roosters, dogs, doves, and horses all pop up on the first track. How exactly the line, "I'm full of bees that died at sea," proceeds logically to the title refrain of, "It's a wonderful life," is questionable at best, but the claustrophobic mix of optigan, static, chamberlin, and Linkous' plaintive delivery redeems the lyrical content with beautiful production and shimmering instrumentation.

The soulful PJ Harvey duet "Piano Fire" picks up the energy a bit, proffering lyrical imagery of dusty organs and pianos washing up on beaches, amid a heavily distorted guitar racket and subtly employed electronics. In different places, It's a Wonderful Life conjures recent Flaming Lips, Mercury Rev, and Grandaddy, all bands who operate in roughly the same headspace as Linkous. The quietly bleeping "Apple Bed," in particular, recalls some of The Sophtware Slump's more elegiac moments.

Unfortunately, there's that one aforementioned sore thumb that interrupts the otherwise smooth flow of the album, so allow me to preface my next statement with the following diatribe: I love Tom Waits. His music is rarely short of brilliant on some level, and I've long admired his position as one of the most fearless, innovative, and downright unique songwriters on the planet. The man's craft is his genius personified, and I can't get enough of it.

So why does his contribution to It's a Wonderful Life suck so much? "Dog Door" is a miserable distraction. Imagine you're floating down a peaceful river on a raft. It's just you, the trees, the birds, and the fish. You don't have a care in the world. Then, suddenly, the violent hillbillies from Deliverance swoop down out of nowhere, pelting you with rocks and shouting an unmemorable phrase over and over again in an annoying, processed falsetto. That is "Dog Door." Allow me now to sulk like a denied child.

The flow of the album actually picks back up rather easily after "Dog Door" finally, mercifully ends, returning to the eerily placid fare that characterizes the rest of the proceedings with "More Yellow Birds." Soon after, "Babies on the Sun" closes things on a tired, but musically inventive note, with burbling electronics and looped string samples supporting typically cryptic lyrics.

It's a Wonderful Life is a strong offering for Sparklehorse, largely shaking off the excesses of past efforts (maddening Tom Waits collaboration aside) in favor of cohesion and structure. The focus unfortunately keeps Linkous from accessing any truly awe-inspiring standout moments like the ones on past records, but the overall result is a lot more rewarding in the long term.