As the subtitle indicates, this is the second mopping-up compilation for Bay Area by-way-of-Sacramento musical hero Anton Barbeau, available as one of the first releases from fledgling label 125 Records. Barbeau is a seriously talented musician whose audience ought to reside in way more zip codes than its current, largely circumscribed dwelling. His lyrics have the rare gift of being simultaneously witty, bizarre, and moving, which manages the neat trick of disarming both cynical distancing and the tendency to equate humor with unseriousness. Musically, he's a guitar-pop songwriter of the first order, chords and melodies flowing forth effortlessly and tunefully but with just enough unexpected twisting and divagation to keep things interesting. "Xmas Song," for example, is the kind of perfect pop song they don't write anymore. The chorus reels you in within the first thirty seconds, but the verse throws in a perfectly integrated extra bar, while that chorus compensates by dropping half a bar on its way back to the verse. It might throw you the first time, but it will seem perfectly natural after that. The middle eight is in the relative minor, textbook-style, but it dissolves into a babble of voices . . . not for the sake of experimentation but because it serves the song. As a compilation, The Golden Boot is not as consistent as Barbeau's regular albums (I'd recommend 1999's A Splendid Tray as his best), and it appropriately provides a forum for his indulgence in odd experiments and peculiar dub versions. It's also far superior to Antology Vol. 1, with several tracks that would have enhanced either A Splendid Tray or its follow-up, last year's 17th Century Fuzzbox Blues. "Little Bleep Bleep" (which appears twice, the second version as a goddamned unlisted bonus track) is yet another perfect pop song, enhanced in this case by massive distortion and a percolating electronic percussive backdrop. The listed version, in fact, features not one but two killer choruses - sung one on top of the other. As a compilation indulgence, the song apparently permitted Barbeau to breathe helium on the outchorus . . . it is fair to say that if such amusements annoy you, they're less reined in on The Golden Boot than elsewhere.

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