Sometimes I swear record companies are just screwing with us. It's as though product marketing divisions have nothing better to do than craft a different version of a UK album for the US, always making sure to delete two songs, but then adding an additional three to confound completists. It's been going on forever, from the Beatles and the Stones right on down the line through modern acts like Mansun, whose first two albums were unceremoniously cropped and chopped for their US releases. So now, just as I've finally figured out how to get all the songs from the US & UK versions of the Clash's debut without purchasing too many tracks twice, Thirsty Ear comes along with this US debut from Brave Captain.

Brave Captain is Martin Carr, formerly the songwriting force behind Liverpool's vastly underrated Boo Radleys. Nothing Lives Long, He Sang, Only the Earth and the Mountains, with its ridiculous, unwieldy title, compiles most of the tracks from Carr's two British mini-albums, The Fingertip Saint Sessions, Vol. 1 and The Fingertip Saint Sessions, Vol. 2: Go With Yourself. But not all of them. The folks at Thirsty Ear have chosen to omit "Starfish" and "Little Buddah" from Vol. 1, and "Running Off the Ground," from Vol. 2, thus leaving Radleys collectors like myself in the cold. And of course, being a Boo Radleys completist was never easy to begin with, as they were a monstrously prolific band, serving up six full-length albums and nearly two dozen EPs in their ten years together.

You might have noticed that I mentioned myself as a Boo Radleys completist back there. It's pretty much true-- they were one of my favorite bands for years, and their penultimate album, the warped, schizophrenic C'mon Kids, is one of my favorite records ever. So now you at least know where I stand while listening to this latest offering. Carr was firmly at the helm for the length of his former band's career, using fellow Liverpudlians the Beatles as his main melodic reference point, though the music the Boo camp so diligently churned out was more White Album than Help! The Boo Radleys split amicably in early 1999, stating that they'd achieved all they believed they could as a band. Their last album, Kingsize, lacked some of the creative flair their earlier work exhibited, but it also displayed Carr's lyrics at their finest and his songcraft at its most traditional.

And all of this brings us to one undeniable point: Carr's solo debut suffers more from what it is not than from what it is. What it is not is a Boo Radleys album. Obviously, it's good for an artist stepping out on his own for the first time to move forward from his past work, and Nothing Lives Long shows tentative signs of doing that. However, the fact remains that most of these songs were written while the band was still together, with vocalist Sice Rowbottom in mind, and it's easy to hear his expressive pipes doing a much better job of putting this material across. Carr's reedy voice simply isn't up to the task of tackling these melodies, particularly the classicist pop of "Reuben." He struggles to carry the song's otherwise fantastic melody, whereas Sice could have easily soared with it.

The formidable Boo Radleys rhythm section of bassist Tim Brown and drummer Rob Cieka is also missed. Carr handles the bass competently enough, and Gorky's Zygotic Mynci drummer Pete Robinson is certainly no slouch behind the traps, but much of the rhythm work has the feel of a session, rather than inspired creation. Actually, the Brave Captain handles a lot of the instruments here himself and does a decent job of it. And that's just it-- it's a decent job, but it doesn't have the fire of his old band. Much of the album slides by on the first listen without making much of an impression. This is typical of an album involving Carr, as most of the Boo Radleys' records revealed themselves slowly. But when half of the songs fail to make an impact on the seventh or eighth listen, there's a problem.

Take "Third Unattended Bag on the Right," for instance. It has some great harmonic shifts at the end of the verse, but the rest of it just ebbs along unnoticed. The nine-minute closer, "Go With Yourself," has a good chorus, but otherwise plods on a boring Rhodes groove, before patently ripping off George Harrison, circa 1968. By far the worst example of aimless wandering, though, is "Where is My Head?" a psychedelic workout that sees Carr totally abandoning his former mastery of unconventional song form. Engineer Gorwel Owen is credited with "that machine that goes blamblamblam," and this pretty much sums up the music. The album reaches its lyrical nadir here, as well, with Carr sleepwalking through lines like, "Where is my head?/ Why do I think like I do?" This stuff might have been cool when Vanilla Fudge had hit albums, but it's long past its prime these days.

Lest you believe the entire album is just boring twaddle, I'd like to make it clear that there's some really great stuff here. Just when it seems like the Captain is going down with the ship, "Raining Stones" saves the day. A fabulous string section combines with Bacharach horns and, er... Branford Marsalis-ish sax for a knockout arrangement that perfectly frames Carr's introspective lyrics. Other highlights include "The Tragic Story," which is more Kinks than Mersey, both musically and lyrically. "Big Red Control Machine" is the one track that proves Carr isn't completely tied down to his past. A mass of intricate loops and a brooding string arrangement lead to a triumphal trumpet break before the song erupts into a fuzzed-out coda. Maybe there is life after the Boo Radleys after all.

Nothing Lives Long is a good start for Carr, but one gets the nagging feeling that this could easily have been a revelatory record in the hands of his old band. As it stands, Brave Captain has managed to craft a pleasant yet inessential debut. I really believe that once he throws off the shadow of the Boo Radleys, Carr could again become a force to reckon with. For now, though, I'm going to break out C'mon Kids and imagine what might have been.

-Joe Tangari