The  Nomad Planets, despite their otherworldly band name, are an earthy quartet with a very polished folk rock sound and a knack for an offbeat lyric.

Singer-songwriter Mark Mybeck and bassist Phil Rapchak began their Chicago music careers in a mid-1990s grunge outfit, Whistling Jupiters. The band has since angled in the direction of Mybeck's more rustic influences, including Graham Parker, John Hiatt, Bob Dylan, Steve Earle and, especially, the neo-rustic REM. The Planets share REM's mix of emotional sensitivity and cynicism, evidenced both in the blend of acoustic authenticity and appropriate shadings of guitar growl (sort of reminiscent of "Automatic for the People"-era REM), and in Mybeck's wry but wide-eyed lyrics. 

REM's Michael Stipe is stiff competition for those who emulate him, and Mybeck's word choices are generally a little simpler and less surprising. But Mybeck is a very interesting wordsmith in his own right. 

The album kicks off exactly the way a struggling artist might hope a debut album would, with an attention-getting melodic pop tune with defitinite radio potential. You'll be pleasantly humming the catch in the chorus for the better part of the day ("there is something for evv-ery one, on my Chinese telephone"). Upon the first listen, it appears to be a light, quirky bit of enjoyably trivial wordplay. Closer listens reveal that within the quirkiness lies some intriguingly scrambled images of postmodern communication breakdown: "Start the engine in your head and
tell me what you think I said..." Mybeck paints the image of a phone conversation wherein the same words mean something different to every listener. A mini-dissertation on the fallability of semantics worthy of David Rabe. 

That much can be appreciated without knowing the additional layer of meaning in Mybeck's mind. "The lyrics basically revolve around an unfortunate misunderstanding on the part of one of my oldest and closest friends (and unfortunately the subsequent dissolving of that friendship)," he says, "and the inevitable communication breakdowns that happen between spouses. Basically it's about people hearing what they want to or think they hear in those particular situations."

Other lyrics tell tantalizingly skeletal stories of relationships ("Emily Smiled," "Wink and a Prayer," "Twisted") or recall in colorfully particular terms the permissably silly and adventrous days of higher education, cast in will be to many post-college listeners the familiarly faulty rose light of nostalgia ("It Wasn't San Diego"). "Sounds like Greed" is a satirical slam at the industry of evangelism, creating a glibly sardonic but subtly respectful charicature of Christ, grimly demanding a cut of his supposed disciples' profits. The words are perfectly expressed in Mybeck's wryly tight-lipped baritone, with tremors of expression beneath the a deadpan reminiscent of folkie Richard Schindell. His delivery hides hints of deeper emotional significance. The songs are richly produced by Mybeck and John Carpenter, who adds splashes of surprising and appropriate mandolin and guitar throughout the warmly spare songs. The polish exceeds that of a lot of albums I've given positive reviews on this website. A couple of the tracks could easily make the leap without anyone noticing from WXRT's "Local Anesthetic" program (on which they've already appeared) to the station's regular playlist.


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