What's different about Greenland, if not clear from the start, is certainly evident by the album's conclusion, or rather, catharsis. The wry pop song-craft that's been synonymous with the band for more than a decade has been switched out for a reeling, dramatic narrative - and not a fictional one. The album mirrors a life in considerable transition; really, a sonic snapshot of David Lowery's exposed nerves plunging into a bucket of ice water.

Like any real process self-discovery, Greenland is a kaleidoscopic sort of journey, swirling and fading, confident one moment, half-terrified the next. In "Something You Ain't Got" (It's hard to tell what it is and what it's not/until it's something you ain't got) absence itself becomes artifact, almost a trophy, "but it's all right"; Lowery is self-effacing and impatient in the sway of "Maggie" but always short of desperate; "Where Have Those Days Gone", is an upbeat elegy (notable not least of all for being rock's only song in recent memory name-checking Thomas Pynchon AND syndicated astrologer Rob Brezsny in the same verse). The Americana-flavored drawl of the first quarter of the album falls away - and none too gently - with the riff-rock of "Gimme One More Chance", which reminds (or informs) that David Lowery has always paid exceptional tribute to his influences, in this case ZZTop (later, in the case of "Sidi Ifni" there's more than a hint of Pink Floyd, and "Minotaur" is strangely seamless mix of both Floyd and ZZTop). Then you're yanked into an Appalachian shanty and given a slug of bathtub gin with the dirty stomp "I'm Glad She Ain't Never Coming Back"; then pensively "drifting down the coast" only to be ambushed by "drunken friends" in "I Need Better Friends". Misery comes out of Lowery's mouth "like butterflies" in "Night Falls", and "Better Times Are Coming Are Way" sounds distinctly as if they are not, with Lowery so up close and personal with his inner Orwellian menace; in "Everybody Gets One For Free", Lowery has "a vision of the Blessed Virgin/but now I'm not sure at all"; and "Darling We're Out Of Time" is a strangely hopeful ode to surrender. Greenland on the whole feeds on contradiction, and questions without answers.

The album is unusual and complex, but flows easily from Cracker's new lineup, sounding nothing less than spontaneous at times. Along with Lowery and guitarist / band co-founder Johnny Hickman are keyboardist Kenny Margolis, drummer Frank Funaro (formerly of The Dictators, among others), and Victor Krummenacher (Camper Van Beethoven), and for very good reason (see: Greenland, Cracker). But during the course of making half-dozen albums, Cracker developed a working method that situated the band at the center of a community of guests and contributors, a sort of musical meetinghouse.

Said Lowery to NYROCK.COM a few years back, "It's very rewarding for Johnny and me. It's almost like a Cracker concept, a concept that was never verbalized, but working with guest musicians is really important for us. They have an energy and idea input. There's a certain dynamic in working with strangers and we both like that. We always make sure to invite a couple of musicians we've never met before".

Stephen Koester (bass), Miguel Urbiztondo (drums, percussion), Cam DiNuzio (bass guitar), Matthew Trowbridge (keyboards), Matt Durant (keyboards), Craig Harmon (organ, keyboards), David Immerglück (guitar), Mark Linkous (guitar, synthesizers), Margaret White (violin), Alan Weatherhead (pedal steel and keys), Lauren Hoffman, Casey Martin and Caitlin Carey (backing vocals) all help to make Greenland a warmer place.

That such a community should pull together around Cracker should come as no surprise to those who know Lowery's musical history, inextricable from the story of what came to be known as 'alternative rock'.

In the mid-nineteen eighties in Santa Cruz, California, David Lowery and Victor Krummenacher formed Camper Van Beethoven, and their jangly and stoned "Take The Skinheads Bowling" became an instant college radio staple, kind of a coded but equally joyous "Louie, Louie" for the Reagan-Bush years. CVB was the only band going that could, for example, finesse the relevant weird tension out of Black Flag's "Wasted" by slowing it down with a honky-tonk beat and adding a half-schizoid violin, and in David Lowery had a singer whose bong-loaded Zen-punk lyrics resonated no matter how puzzling and surreal they got. What came to be called 'alternative' music had just begun.

Camper Van Beethoven disbanded, rather eventfully in Sweden, following their second major label release. But by then, 1991, the world in question had changed considerably, and not without help from CVB, so when David Lowery formed Cracker in its wake, the band fit nicely into this new ever-widening niche he'd helped create. Cracker's sound had less in common with Camper's exotic excursions, more in common with the Kinks and Southern roots music. Where CVB was eccentric, Cracker was smoothly eclectic. In '92 Lowery, guitarist Johnny Hickman, Davey Faragher (later replaced by Bob Rupe) enlisted drummers and percussionists Jim Keltner, Rick Jaeger, and Phil Jones, and released their eponymous debut on Virgin. That record offered a hooky sociological diagnosis, "Teen Angst (What The World Needs Now)", that proved to be quite correct. The song was taken to heart by modern rock radio, hitting #1. The band followed up a year later with Kerosene Hat , containing an enormous hit and instant (freshly coined) 'alternative' classic called "Low". And lo, the band had a gold record.

Since shortly after the tour for Cracker's The Golden Age, Lowery spent considerable time putting his inimitable sonic humanism in the service of other artists as a producer, first with San Francisco's Cat Head , and on to Sparklehorse's obviously titled Vivadixiesubmarinetransmissionplot, Counting Crows, and most recently Jason Molina of Magnolia Electric Company as well as Lucero. "I just have to feel like there's a real strong artistic vision with the artist, and if there is, then it's fun to make a record. If there isn't, it's like assembling furniture or something." Sufficient here to say David Lowery does not make a lot of furniture, figuratively or otherwise.

Greenland's new more emotional panorama is not without Lowery's trademark candor—twisting references (we were ripped/and we were torn ; or it's bar time at the Scottish gates of dawn/there's a piper playing on the cemetery lawn), an eye for character (you dress like a chick/ drawn by an outsider artist), and utterly unique lyrical cadence (no one but David Lowery can sing this with the such old-soul conviction: hanging out with folks just half my age/buying vintage synthesizers/sometimes skater shoes/sometimes re-issues of those vintage synths from "I Need Better Friends" (please note organ solo therein). There's plenty of mirth in the fog, flotsam, the thorns, the broken light, the old circus tent, and any number of places on Greenland. Greenland's openness and virtue—doesn't come with the sort of egoistic 'soul-bearing' that usually passes for it. It comes from someplace else altogether, probably someplace huge and faraway and strange. Like, say, Greenland.