Is there any new ground waiting to be broken in spoken word? Now that masters like Gil Scott-Heron and the Lost Poets are seen by many as mere footsteps to hip-hop, the genre of spoken word seems barely a footnote. This is not to degrade what goes on down at the Nuyorican, or anywhere else where verse is graced with extra-poetic, musical qualities. Even so, it's not like last year's Sekou Sundiata album, Longstoryshort, did anything to win over non-fans of the genre.

The thing is, Dave Fischoff is primarily a poet, and a sound one at that. His words are crisp and vivid, and his imagery is unfailing. But instead of reciting his poems over a disposable musical backdrop, Fischoff wisely chooses to sing them in off-kilter melodies that find his voice flipping from a low register growl to a high, near-falsetto warble. The accompanying music, all of which is played by Fischoff, is sparse enough to let his vocals and writing shine as the focal points.

Still, when his sophomore full-length, The Ox and the Rainbow, is looked at as poetry, Fischoff is undeniably cheating; he uses his pipes and accompanying instruments to reinforce the mood and feeling that words alone should invoke. From a musical point of view, though, the record is more than sound; it's intelligently capricious and euphoniously insightful.

Through all of its anti-spoken word triumph, what's most telling about The Ox and the Rainbow's success is its swift boundary dodging. Most of the album's eight tracks are as accessible as straight pop songs, though with few rhyming couplets and almost completely devoid of refrains or catchy hooks. The record also bears the mark of the singer/songwriter, but is surprisingly bereft of cathartic emotional baggage. Fischoff's approach to songwriting is stream-of-consciousness fare that simultaneously feels down to earth. The Ox and the Rainbow even lacks the loftiness you'd expect; Fischoff's musings are subdued, unaffected, and decidedly unimposing.

There's an endearing flatness to Dave Fischoff's voice that makes for a convincing delivery. It's evident on the first track, "A Nap at Truthtime, Some Magic Slips Away," which opens with a lush multi-tracked a cappella harmony. This gives way to lightly strummed guitar and sluggish programmed drums over which Fischoff delivers his first of many jaw-dropping stanzas: "Across the street/ Some memories stir/ Inside a dark house/ Where a heart bulb/ Flashes, loses heat, and/ Curtained windows stare." Here Fischoff offers a stark, somber slice-of-life with deftly haunting images and prosopopoeia.

Fischoff's craft is so adroit that he feels like a surrealist photographer who does wordsmithing on the side. The pictures he reveals in "How Things Move in the Wind" are uncannily acute, from a boy chasing shadows of nightingales to trees eerily tapping windows. If he seems a bit abstract, he is, but no more so than, say, Jeff Mangum, whose intriguing lyrics do more to create visceral impressions than to spout linear narratives.

Fischoff's words are best synthesized with his tunes in the delicate, deliberate "Geranium." Again, imagery is Fischoff's strength when he shows the listener the picture of a child playing the piano. The infantile composition is compared to the "music of the moon," which "rides through the windows/ Fills the bed/ Where we kiss." As the music continues its gentle sway, Fischoff's voice wells and suitably cracks when he sings, "Unfold/ Our spoons are full of weather/ Our skin is in bloom."

The Ox and the Rainbow finds Fischoff growing comfortable in his own skin; it's not the nearly inaudible whisper of a record that was his fuzz-caked 1998 debut LP, Winston Park. Fischoff is piping up, and has the effect of a bookworm taking off glasses and shaking out his hair. He's not gearing up for a party as much as ensuring that he'll be heard. And with a voice this eloquent, a turn to assuredness is a wise one.

-Richard M. Juzwiak