Jay Bennett & Edward Burch

This is the first of what’s promised to be a three-disc series. Holy smokes. This 15-song CD comes on like gangbusters with “Puzzle Heart,” a killer slide guitar and pedal steel-laced number that sounds like a great lost Badfinger track, and doesn’t let up. Bennett, who teamed with Chicago songwriter Burch here, had left Wilco last summer—which may explain why some of these songs, bursting at the seams with (too much) information, sound like outtakes from Summerteeth: an expansive mix of post-Beatle smarts, heartland soul and the kind of freewheeling bombast that guys named Springsteen don’t run away from. If there’s any fault to be found, it’s in the absence of space—density is a good thing most of the time, but sometimes it pays to add a little air to the thick sonic goo during the mixing process. Don’t get me wrong, though; there’s enough topnotch guitar pop here to power a small city.