*** Francine

FORTY ON A FALL DAY

(Q Division)

As Pavement's Crooked Rain, Crooked Rain was to spring and Guided by Voices' Alien Lanes was to summer, Francine's crackerjack debut is to autumn -- the aptly titled Forty on a Fall Day feels like the perfect seasonal soundtrack. The songs recall those sensitive high-school-hallway introverts who spent way too much time scribbling cracked, smartly funny lyrics for imaginary new-wave bands -- in other words, people like Francine singer/songwriter Clayton Scoble. With a melodic voice that brings to mind XTC's Andy Partridge covering a Pavement tune ("Mean As Hell" and "I Do Too") and fellow players who keep finding the inspired sweet spot between both, the ex-Poundcake singer puts his literate, scene-stealing imagination on a display that's as self-depreciating as it is precocious.

"Pop Warner" is the obvious ear catcher, with its fantasy-crush tale about Scoble clumsily hanging with Kim Deal in a dream -- and still feeling as if he were screwing up the date like a geek. But a B-squad of other lovable shmucks keep popping up like Waldos amid Scoble's sly wordplay and crowded scenery. There's the temping key grip who pines for the "head sand stager" on the set of an '80s movie ("Set of Dune"), and the daydreaming "understudy with the overbite" on "Jets to Norway." And, of course, throughout these tracks, there are the eminently charming guys in Francine.

-- Jonathan Perry