***1/2 Greg Brown

FURTHER IN

(Red House)

As the title indicates, Greg Brown's latest CD finds the gruff-voiced singer/songwriter in a more personal, intimate mode than on 1994's sprawling, epic Poet Game. On Further In, Brown sounds isolated and withdrawn from his fellow man and woman, even when he sings directly to them ("Small Dark Movie," "China"). But solipsism has always suited him well. It heightens his powers of observation, as when he calls someone "as smug as a commentator on NPR" on the Dylanesque "Where Is Maria." And no one makes solitude sound as sexy and inviting as Brown does on "Think About You" ("Gonna turn off the radio, control nothing remotely . . . I gotta be all alone, and just think about you.") Further In is his "folkiest" album in years, featuring acoustic guitars and bass, with touches of mandolin, fiddle and vocal harmonies. But even with such accompaniment, his dozen portraits of the artist as a lone man give new, chilling meaning to the term "solo album."

-- Seth Rogovoy

(Greg Brown plays at the Somerville Theatre this Saturday, October 19, with Connie Kaldor.)