About a year and a half ago, I was running in the local park on an early Sunday morning when I came upon a naked man flailing against the park's stone facilities. The flailing man's clothes lay strewn about as he raved. A couple of police officers stood at a safe distance, waiting for the first opportunity to subdue him. While I was immediately grasped by the absurdity of the flailing man's scene, I'm sure he felt quite differently. Perceiving a reality to which the only decent answer was taking your clothes off and convulsing about wildly, the flailing man, if his embattled mind considered me at all, most likely considered me insane. How could I run calmly, still wearing my shirt and shorts, at a time like this? Why, for heaven's sake, was I not flailing about like him? What was wrong with me... with all of us?

I continued my run, and to this day, I have no idea what became of him, let alone what made him react so ridiculously. I have, however, constructed in my mind over the months since past a handful of circumstances that might drive a perfectly sane man to such action. Perhaps the man's high school sweetheart and wife of many years lay in the park's bathroom dead by her own hand, leaving only a suicide note deriding his awful taste in clothing. Maybe his clothes were infested with awful burrowing insects that continued their evil business even after he was able to shed their source. Each time I imagine such episodes, I ponder the factors necessary to drive me to such ends. Thus, by addressing the flailing man's seemingly inane actions through my reality, I expose with clarity my own deepest fears and emotions.

Similarly, Freedy Johnston's best work cuts to the core of life by encapsulating in song his narrator's unique perception. That we find the narrator's cemetery romance morbidly odd only sharpens the sentimentality of 1992's "Mortician's Daughter." "Fun Ride," the chronicle of an amusement park ride that doubles as a metaphor for a young mechanic and his nervous girlfriend's life together, is a '90s masterpiece. With his notoriously eclectic creations, Johnston has made a place for himself among the decade's better songwriters.

Sadly, Freedy's pen seems to have dulled dramatically on his fifth full- length album, Blue Days, Black Nights. A collection of pedestrian tales of loss, the album's cuts barely break the skin. Gone are the lush eccentricities of the people lamented on Can You Fly, Johnston's high- water mark. Here, they're replaced by an undistinguished collection of depressed, two- dimensional caricatures and complete nonentities. The album's theme plays out awkwardly-– on "Underwater Life," a boater searches for happiness in the depths of the sea, while "The Farthest Lights," finds an astronomer looking to the sky for answers-– overloading the emotions of loneliness and isolation at the expense of usual complexities of Johnston's songs. The album's bleakness overwhelms initial listens, but excavating its dour mood with later samplings reveals nothing below the surface.

Similarly, the guy seems to have pulled back the reigns musically. Though his wonderful voice and gift of melody are still apparent, Johnston, who once held his own among indie rockers and folk singers alike, has retreated into an increasingly familiar formula: tuneful but bland ballads. Paving the album with an annoying pleasant sheen, the production team of T-Bone Burnett and Roger Moutenot do nothing to save this turn towards the middle of the road, rendering "rave ups" like "Changed Your Mind" awkward and out of place.

Granted, Johnston's qualities as an artist-– his songwriting and vocals-- leave Blue Days, Black Nights listenable, although disappointing. There used to be an edge in his music. Now it's all too knowable. Where's that flailing man when you need him?

-Neil Lieberman