Changer

For an album as broadly titled as Changer, Fred Thomas does deliver on artistic shapeshifting. The chameleonic album mirrors a hugely vacillating personal snapshot of Thomas’ life since the release of 2015’s All Are Saved, delivered largely in spoken-word bursts of bounding power-pop and punk. Sparse and catchy songs like the guitar-and-vocals “Brickwall” highlight Thomas’ conversationalist bent, while a kind of free-associative lyricism threatens to bury the charm of it and other tracks. When he’s not fussing with cutesy new wave or jangly pop rock, Thomas dabbles in an ambient vignette on the title track, minimalist electro on the mesmerizing instrumental “Oval Beach,” and full-on orchestral fuzz on the sweeping opus “There Is No Need to Participate.” Despite an inherent desperation, Changer emerges decadent and dirty, daring to be both confessional and funny at the same time, and humanizes its benevolent creator much more honestly than is usually expected from a pop album.