Jason Falkner's album of bedroom recording experiments delivers his trademark power-pop with a raw, energetic finish that never leaves you bored. Necessity is the white wine of forty-year old white chicks, the Milwaukee's Best of frat boys and the strong black tea of aging British spinsters in Agatha Christie novels: soothing, absolutely necessary, the occasion and the fuel of any party.

Falkner's vocals are remniscent of Matthew Sweet, but somehow his accents are flatter and his voice is a shade deeper, which is definitely an improvement. The lyrics he writes are not overly complex, and you won't find the fifty-cent vocabulary words of the hip literate '90s types. Some are downright repetitive, and amazingly, you don't ever care; in Train, the phrase "his train leaves on time" is repeated at length, but I didn't want him to catch it. Falkner's themes aren't complex, and -- as befits an album of four-track recordings -- there's no unifying lyrical concept to tie the album up in a tidy package; it's a record of heartbreak and misunderstandings...your typical pop song fare. Reworking these tired ideas is a challenge, and Falkner is prepared. Instead of making them new (you can't, really), he makes them unimportant, as if recognizing that these events are unlikely to have a lasting effect on the world at large. His sense of fun is pervasive, even when he's singing the blues; bad things happen and he observes them accurately, but it's not the deep introspection of the perennially joy-challenged.

Falkner keeps his instrumentation basic, too; guitars, bass, drums, occasional synth (in "She's Not the Enemy"), a steel-belly (in "Road Kill Blues") and one funky wind instrument that sounds like a bassoon ("Song for Her"). His harmonies are amazing -- to me, the mark of someone who knows what he's doing when he sings -- particularly in "I Go Astray" and the soaring aaahs of "She Goes to Bed". You'll definitely hear the influences of other major power-pop players, such as Chris Bell and Teenage Fanclub, but updated, and shoehorned into Falkner's peculiar pop perceptions.

In the liner notes, Falkner thanks his parents for putting up with his "Peter Brady" moments. If he was trying to capture the Brady Bunch spirit in the album, he's got to be pleased with his results. Necessity: the 4-Track Years brings home that goofy, happy, slightly doped-up mood, like riding in a convertible with your eyes closed and your face turned toward the wind.