Pitchfork

Why are you leaving the house? A concert? Stay home. Stream it. Why travel? You can always make trans-Atlantic friends with MySpace. Fodor's has some pretty brilliant photographs, too. And what's the deal with getting sweaty this summer? The air conditioner is so nice.

Krist Krueger-- the 26-year-old Wisconsin-born, Portland-based songwriter that leads what was once a one-man-band called Southerly-- is terrified of living a safe life. He wants experience. "So coax yourself to make believe/ That you'll come back in a cloud of smoke/ With guns blazing," he boasts on "How to Be a Dreamer", the literal and thematic centerpiece of his second album, Storyteller & the Gossip Columnist. "And on that day, you'll find yourself/ The self that you've been struggling to be/ Just make believe." Elsewhere, Krueger-- who leads a band, owns a record label, runs a booking agency, produces records and ostensibly has a personal life-- depicts the pretty, jaded girl snubbing romantic inquiries, ponders the empty pages lining the narrative of his life, and laments kids wasting their romantic youths while sitting in factory parking lots. If Krueger were a character in a Built to Spill song, he wouldn't be stuck at home in Twin Falls.

That ideal of living the rich, full life cuts both ways on Columnist: There's a wonderful amount of variety here, from the crescendo that capitalizes on the potential energy of Krueger's coiled emotions during the self-doubting "If We All Forgot" to the pedestrian showmanship springing from the piano keys during the hopeful "Soldiers". Krueger is arranging for a full band with horns and strings on Columnist, and, thrown to the orchestra for the first time, he's remarkably accomplished, tastefully piling layers that augment rather than clutter. And the songs themselves come with bent, purposefully altered structures: One leads with the refrain, while another condenses its verses to a sum of 30 seconds and lets the edict-- "Breathe, 'cause it just might be your last"-- and melodramatic violin movements occupy most of the other two minutes. Krueger also sings with the fidelity of a songwriter who's seen what he's saying. In fact, he's often better at conveying his sentiments with vocal nuances than with the words themselves: Lyrically, the cresting "If We All Forget" is a wash ("I'm afraid, scared to death...I'm a shell of who I once was"), but Krueger's voice-- a thin wisp of air barely passing through his high register-- articulates the anxiety perfectly.

But when Krueger misses either lyrically or musically, his problems stem from rushed concepts, as though he's trying to say or live too much too fast. The most interesting lyrical ideas here are tossed-off. Krueger raises interesting lyrical ideas, such as his suggestion that John Lennon's love songs were about more than love, and that some hearts can actually be scared of future calluses. But he never really chases these ideas with the vigor and vision they warrant. The latter even gets treated like a Jason Mraz jangle, "old man's eyes" rhymed with paralyzed over a chafing acoustic guitar jerk and a lazy bass throb.

Likewise, the handful of musical ideas that don't meet their potential on Columnist suffer from a lack of commitment: Only one of the four instrumentals here (the ponderous waltz of "For the Speechless Coward", foreshadowing "Dreamer", the album's pinnacle) has any sway on the imprint the album provides when its 38 minutes are up. Prelude "Visage Sans Expression" surrounds a fleet, fingerpicked acoustic line with strings both dark and bright. It's pretty and graceful but, ultimately, just passive. Likewise, 52-second closer "Simple Simon" tinkers with two concurrent guitar loops. It's an interesting trinket, but its ultimate effect is showing: All the sudden, you'll probably realize you've enjoyed your time with Storyteller & the Gossip Columnist well enough, but you don't feel too much about the music that's been soundtracking your last 38 minutes. That's more than a tad ironic, right?