The jangly, punky garage rock that made Kilgour famous was an influence on so much underground music it’s almost difficult to listen to anything tagged with the “indie” label without hearing echoes of The Clean. Mr. Kilgour could have rested on his laurels 29 years after his old band first got together.

Instead, he has been consistently writing beautiful, ambitious pop music for each of his solo releases.

On this seventh release, entitled The Far Now, Kilgour seems to be channeling a spirit of renewal. He’s always been deft at taking stories about life and love and making us forget that plenty of other songwriters have written about these themes since the dawn of rock and roll.  

From track to track, Kilgour shifts the texture and tone of each song in subtle ways so that nothing ever sounds quite the same. However, the entire album enjoys a certain consistency.   

With ethereal keyboard treatments, acoustic and electric guitars and a tastefully solid rhythm section, this album spins gorgeously shimmering and gently driving songs like “Yenisei,” and the delicately effervescent “Sun of God.”   

This is a pop album, but there is always a kernel of experimental sound in the threads of each song’s composition. This is especially effective on “Wave of Love,” in which a brightly dissonant guitar drone replaces a more conventional guitar line as the song ends.  Likewise, “I’m Gonna Get Better Lately” opens with a blissed out arrangement of atmospherics that nearly sounds like one of ELO’s early 1980s, synth-heavy excursions. 

Much of the mood across this album is hushed but not subdued. The whole affair has a cinematic quality as though Kilgour is something of a long-lost filmmaker or novelist perfecting his creative expression in music rather than through visual or textual narrative.  

The Far Now may not be quite as good as 2004’s Frozen Orange but, in typical Kilgour style, there are no throwaway songs and this entire record is worth a close listen.