While alt.country squandered its moment on vintage gabardine shirts, Chuck Prophet’s roots-rock has never needed dressing up, whatever sub-genres he has crossed along his fifteen-year solo career. Not to say Prophet’s music is bare—Age of Miracles, the SF singer and guitarist’s sixth album, has Beatlesy strings, bluesy snares, a top hat’s worth of synth tricks, and Prophet’s own seasoned leads and drawled vocals. It’s the sort of virtual orchestra Beck would use for postmodern bachelor-pad music, but Prophet writes the kind of fundamentalist pop songs underrated in the music industry since the mid-‘60s: ones that would look good no matter what they’re wearing.

If the Brill Building were still in business—and let’s say we have a stage-set view of what goes on inside—we might catch the Flaming Lips psyching out Miracles’ liltingly cynical title track (Gonna eat and drink our fill/Lose that baby fat for real/No secrets left to conceal). In the next window, maybe we’d spot Jack White belting the politics out of “West Memphis Moon” or Rufus Wainwright balladeering “The Smallest Man in the World” into exquisite melodrama. And look, there’s the maestro himself on the top floor, counting his money. But here in the real world, Prophet embodies all those elements himself (except the money-counter), still hungry and decking out his songs with his own lush, slightly scruffy sound. Lucky for us, at least.