Mike Doughty, formerly M. Doughty, not to be confused with American Idol's Daughtry, was once my idol, playing music with Soul Coughing that was as similar to rap as could be expected from a white Army brat, and writing for the New York Press. Fortunately I never lived up to my dream of being him, because then I'd have to be signed to Dave Matthew's ATO Records and probably practicing Matthews' lines with him for the next time he's on House.

One tries not to judge Doughty by the company he keeps, of course, and though his singing is sometimes compared to Matthews', their voices are actually quite distinct. Matthews' sounds like roofies, while Doughty's just wants to invite you up for a couple beers and get to know you. (He understands that no means no.)

Moving on: Golden Delicious's first two tracks are among the best I've heard from him. Both borrow ditties from outside sources, "Fort Hood" from Hair's "The Flesh Failures (Let The Sunshine In)," and "I Just Want the Girl in the Blue Dress to Keep on Dancing" from "The Little Drummer Boy"'s "ba-rum-ba-bum-bum"-type thing. Hell, the third track, "Put It Down," is full of nonsensical, recycled-feeling sing-along tidbits ("put it downtown, put it down, down" "let it go go, let it go go," "drop it in the mail, drop it in the sauce, bottle up the sauce") and it's good, too. Doughty's former hip-hop mentality is probably what allows him to engage in this free-association, homage/rip-off technique, and there's no reason why more earnest singer-songwriters shouldn't adopt pastiche approaches.

Things are actually tighter here musically than his last album, Haughty Melodic, which this website complained was "full of jam-band percussion, vanilla-funk basslines, and the occasional strings and horns, played with an affected worldliness." It surely helps that ever-unpretentious producer and Semisonic alum Dan Wilson-- who also produced Haughty and won a Grammy with the Dixie Chicks-- has had three years to step his game up. Production-wise, Golden Delicious splits the difference between Haughty and Free Life, Wilson's solo debut from last year which strayed far too close to the adult contemporary flame. Only 37 minutes long and mostly recorded live, Golden Delicious has crowd-pleasing on its mind, so much that it even features "The Final Countdown"-style solos from keyboardist John Kirby.

Doughty's solo career trajectory is clearly headed skyward since the days of his first two solo works, Skittish and Rockity Roll, fairly granola affairs both. Why, then, have the powers-that-be (Matthews?) chosen a Rockity Roll outtake as Golden Delicious' first single, the boring "27 Jennifers"? It sounds just like the old version, which was no fun to begin with. (Perhaps it has some sort of subliminal commercial appeal I can't hear. A young Texas girl in hot pants has a YouTube video of herself vamping to it, after all.)

But "27 Jennifers" isn't the worst song on the album -- that would be "More Bacon Than the Pan Can Handle," a self-consciously weird clunker which retreats from the album's "hum first, think later" ethos. The ship is righted by the efficient, na-na-na-y "I Wrote a Song About Your Car", but riffing and borrowing aren't going to work for him forever, just as Soul Coughing's (I almost said Soul Asylum's) beat-poetry and upright-bass oeuvre sounds ridiculously dated nowadays. Eventually Doughty is going to have to do something about his lyrics, because "The moonlight shines like a luminous girl tonight/ Yeah, Jesus Christ like a luminous girl tonight" isn't going to hack it. My advice: stick with Wilson, but hire Pharoahe Monch to ghostwrite.