The thirteen songs on Released, written and recorded between 1989 and 1996, are a series of lessons in songwriting, arranging, and recording. There is a moment in the performance of each song when the singing transitions to the voice of a character—one who’s lost in thought, charming, bruised, brittle with vulnerability or anger, of or above the fray, or lopsided with poet swagger. The guitar’s grit has flowers in it. The narrator of these songs is illuminated more by soft colors than by flickers of darkness.