My grumpy sentiments concerning the singer-songwriter phenomenon are amply documented in this space. Even so, my animosity does not, never has and never will extend to Steve Forbert, who has been in my life since his first album, Alive on Arrival, which showed up in 1978 when he was working out of the New York City folk scene. (Mississippi born, he now lives in Nashville.) That album was the recipient of ecstatic reviews, and just about everybody agrees that it pleases as wholly today as it did then. It's still among the most entertaining singer-songwriter albums I've ever heard, and still like no other. It remains in print, if you're interested.

Except for four years out of commission owing to legal issues between record labels in the mid-1980s, Forbert has continued to write songs, tour, and release recordings, something in the vicinity of 25 of them by 2024. If nothing since has boasted quite the explosive impact and blissful perfection of Alive, every album has rewarded attention, and I've heard most.

Forbert isn't like anybody else, in good part because of his (literal) voice, which seems as youthfully high-spirited as that one from all those decades gone by. It's usually cheerful, creatively observational, unselfconsciously friendly. Also intelligent in a regular-guy sort of way. It sounds like only himself, and he has chosen to sound that way all of his career. I'm talking firmly strummed acoustic guitar up front, skeletal rock band behind, and keenly composed lyrics usually not on the ordinary subjects. Folk-rock is what it amounts to, but in Forbert's distinctive definition.

So don't expect anything comparable to "Dylan goes electric" on Daylight Savings Time. You should anticipate no more than the comfort of Forbert's presence. There is, for example, "Sound Existence," the testimony of a happy man who eschews both sentimentality and dopiness, and "The Blues," which generated the unexpected thought, "Dylan couldn't have written this." It bears remarking that early in his career some talked of Forbert as the "new Dylan," an idiotic notion that Forbert modestly but emphatically rejected.

While Dylan has already written a stellar song on the blues, "Blind Willie McTell" is masterly but unsparing on the genre's grim history. Forbert acknowledges that the blues -- here only starting with the music -- can be merciless enough to kill you if it wants; yet "The Blues" turns out to be a weirdly good-natured song. Possibly only he could have pulled off something like this, a song very much about one thing while simultaneously appearing to be about something else.

At 10 cuts Daylight Savings Time possibly could have used two more, but one doesn't expect complaints about it. What matters is that an old, welcome friend is visiting.