Micah Blue Smaldone is, by the looks of him, an ordinary young man living out the 21st century. He lives somewhere in Maine, perhaps a bit sheltered by distance from the realities of NASCAR-mad, internet-porn-stained modern life. But even if he lived in a shack, off the grid and at the end of a long dirt road, that wouldn't explain the degree of anachronism in the lovely Some Sweet Day. Smaldone sounds like a lost turn-of-the-century radio star, singing in a trembling voice about hair ribbons and cotton harvests, backed by quick, skillful country blues guitar. Some Sweet Day is a wonderful album, but it sounds like a Folkways reissue, not like a record that came out this year.

Smaldone's voice is sweet and slightly nasal, shaking slightly with sincerity, just like the old-timers did. His guitar playing is precise and rhythmic, always well under control even when it goes fast. His instrumentals -- "Ice Cream Socialist," "Blind Boy Rag" and "Pine Needle Rag" -- have the feel of Scott Joplin pieces, quietly transposed to guitar. Yet perhaps the most archaic element of his whole presentation is the lyrics, which could have been written by any card-carrying radical of the Palmer Raid era. "In the Jailhouse Now" is a jaunty protest tune, bearing the up-to-date observation "When they stood up to the man / they got thrown in the can." However, the "they" in question includes people like Sacco and Vanzetti, the Italian immigrants put to the chair in the mid-1920s. I keep waiting for Smaldone's verse to bring the scenario up to the present, to make some connection with Ashcroft's raids on Arab Americans, but it doesn't come. He is completely content to stay in the 1920s. However, just because he's rooted in the past doesn't mean he's sentimental. "Root Hog or Die" is about as ruthless an observation of power and exploitation as anything Rage Against the Machine has ever done...it's just couched in the style of another time and place.

This is a record out of time. Once you've made your peace with that -- that this is a 1920s record that just happened to be pressed a couple of months ago -- Some Sweet Day has a curious kind of charm.