*** Peter Case

FULL SERVICE NO WAITING

(Vanguard)

When Peter Case gave up the power-pop Plimsouls for an acoustic guitar and a harmonica in 1984, his mutation into a baggy-suited balladeer may have seemed to some like a passing indulgence. But 14 years and a half-dozen solo discs later he's still drawing from a deep well of folk and blues roots.

Full Service No Waiting is his most subdued, stripped-down collection of original songs yet, and it's also his most overtly personal. He reflects on his rootless youth -- some of it spent as a homeless street singer. The narrator of "On the Way Downtown" returns to his old haunts to reconnect with a past when "anything could happen, anything could change." "See Through Eyes" meditates on lost youth; "Crooked Mile" delivers straight autobiography over some furious blues fingerpicking. Case has always been intense, but here he's sweet as well. He muses on his current domesticity in the breezy "Beautiful Grind" before bringing it all back home with the album closer, "Still Playing," in which, "older than I ever thought I'd be," he rejoices that he's still around, and that music still sustains him.

-- Chris Erikson