Convicted in the court of hip some time in the late seventies of Failure to Maintain Edginess and Navel-Dwelling While Introspective, and with a .02 blood-saccharin level yet (twice the limit designated by the Irony Act of 1978), singer-songwriters have since lain low, discarding their acoustic guitars in favor of electrics and their obligatory turn at the piano for a remix treatment by the DJ du jour. Some, like Jeffrey Owen McGregor of the Solipsistics, hide behind the thin veil of a band name and quietly chuckle to themselves, both at their ruse, transparent yet undetected, and in the case of McGregor, at the aptness of his chosen band name. The Solipsistics avoid the sappiness lurking within the genre in part by adhering to a fairly dry and rough-hewn yet clean recording aesthetic and partly by virtue of McGregor's sharply observed lyrics, as with the narrator of "Employee of the Year" who fruitlessly muses that it would be better if his employers had "but one neck." That song and most others focus outward instead of excessively inward, so that songs that might be read as personal and introspective can be interpreted as writing in character rather than addressing the singer's own self. For instance, the wonderfully drawn "Angel of Gracie Square" presents its narrator in the throes of revelation: he's old, and therefore being out of touch with trendiness just doesn't matter. McGregor seems equally at home with guitar-based pop songwriting like "Employee" or "Industrial Artist" as he is with songs led by keyboards, such as "I Guess I Didn't Take Enough" or "That Kills Me," which at times remind me of Mark Everett, a/k/a "E," from The Eels. As one might guess, the Solipsistics display a keen sense of musical history, notable in such witty touches as the french horn solo in "(They Tease Me Because) They Like Me," which follows the solo in "For No One" nearly note for note, or the lead-in to the backing vocal at the end of "The Quiet Room": "And the women in white coats sing, 'doo doot-doo doot-doo doot-doot-doo….'" Such exemplary behavior on the part of singer-songwriters demands a pardon. Would that more of them follow the example of Jeffrey Owen McGregor and the Solipsistics.

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