Personnel: Richard Swift (background vocals); Mike Pederson, Mike Pederson (banjo); Greg Riley (flute, clarinet, saxophone); Matt Fronke (trumpet, flugelhorn); Frank Lenz (drums).

Additional personnel: Elijah Thomson (bass guitar).

Audio Mixer: Elijah Thomson.

Recording information: THe Fabulous Green Room, Huntington Beach, CA (03/01/2001-11/??/2003).

If you seek an artist who combines the songwriting skills of Harry Nilsson and the skewed, old-timey outlook of Van Dyke Parks with the arrangement smarts of Brian Wilson and the imaginative electronic sweep of classic Radiohead, look no further. The California musician and songwriter Richard Swift began issuing CDs and retro-sounding singles in the early 2000s, and this double CD collects his first and second albums. His captivating 2002 debut, WALKING WITHOUT EFFORT, finds Swift flexing his creative muscles on a collection of sun-dappled, vintage-sounding folk-pop, and "Foreward," the magical instrumental introduction to 2004's THE NOVELIST, is the gateway to a perfectly realized set, whose mix of sharp songwriting and contemporary electronica is coated with a patina of sepia-tinged nostalgia.

Beginning with an arc of distant, echo-laden strings and a chorus of voices that sound as if they escaped from the buried and decaying reels of an aborted Disney film, Richard Swift's Secretly Canadian debut paints a world out of time from the very first note. The West Coast singer/songwriter has no qualms about resurrecting Franks Wild Years-era Tom Waits and filtering it through the "new weird America" sound of fellow crooners Andrew Bird and Devendra Banhart, but he manages to find the perfect balance between melody and texture. It's a lot like opening the doors to a packed speakeasy in the '30s, complete with choreographed dancing and well-coiffed but shady characters shaking hands in the corners. Swift's lo-fi, Tin Pan Alley dreamscapes are as lush as they are distant, relying on everything from barroom piano to programmed drums without ever seeming contemporary. Comprised of two records, 2001's Walking Without Effort and 2004's The Novelist, Swift has taken all of the best sepia-tone instrumental moments from Michael Penn and tenderized them into a hobo dinner with Ray Davies slinging the slop. Listeners will find themselves enchanted, disturbed, and speaking in metaphors for days. ~ James Christopher Monger