Bob Schneider - I'm Good Now (2004)

Review by Richie Unterberger
I'm Good Now is quite varied, echoing several singer/songwriter traditions. You can hear traces of Tom Waits, Elvis Costello, Bruce Springsteen, and Van Morrison here and there, though laced with a sort of American heartland rock & roll spirit not found too abundantly in any of those figures, other than possibly Springsteen. In fact, sometimes there's a sense that you might be listening to a compilation album, the record moving from fairly slick, earnest mainstream rock and more anthemic, alternative-minded stuff to near-folk ("A Long Way to Get"), country-laced outlaw narrative (the title track), crunchy hard rock ("C'mon Baby"), studly funk humor ("Capn Kirk"), and white boy hip-hop-tinged rock ("Getting Better"). The songs are pretty verbose, without conveying much specific other than the sense of a guy rolling with the punches, one day at a time, sometimes with an observational sense of humor that falls short of knee-slapping. What this lacks, other than a set identity, is much of an individual voice, drawing extensively on tested rock singer/songwriter forms without adding much of note to them. The only big surprise on the record is when an unidentified ballad plays as a hidden track after a minute or so of silence following "Getting Better," the last song listed on the sleeve.