It’s a good time to be a Joseph Arthur fan. Though the Ohio-born singer-songwriter has never been a layabout—he and his band, the Lonely Astronauts, recorded 80 songs in late 2006, only a fraction of which he’s managed to release—lately his pace has been downright frenetic. This year he’s released four EPs and the full-length Temporary People, all on his own label, and till his eviction last month he was running a gallery and show space in Brooklyn called the Museum of Modern Arthur. Temporary People is a grab bag of classic-rock-radio anthems, pastichey R & B, and po-faced attempts at country gospel—when you get right down to it, you could say the same about Exile on Main Street—which sometimes fails to connect and sometimes succeeds, ineffably and powerfully. —Monica Kendrick
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