arly last century, Henry Ford offered his staff the huge sum of five dollars for an eight-hour day of work. He wanted to get his workers living ‘right,’ working right, and saving right (and if possible buying cars). It worked, kinda. Staff turnover dropped, absenteeism too, but workers felt they had traded their pride and privacy for money and $5 didn’t change the fact that the work, well, sucked.

Just what that has to do with 27 year old New Jersey-ite Lt. Lloyd I have no idea. According to his website, this is his fifth album in six years, though the first three albums were really just taped compilations for friends. His fourth album earned good reviews, but it’s self-distributed and thus pretty tough to track down. Even this latest album was only circulated to a handful of review sites and magazines; thank god Stylus was on the list.

It’s pretty much a solo project. Although Lloyd recruits a few friends—Matt Dewitt (drums), Blink Durand (bass) and A. Nelson (trumpet)—for very occasional live shows, it’s never become a band proper. In fact, Nelson is the only guest credited on Black Bear’s liner notes. Virtually everything—that’s no understatement when you list it: acoustic and electric guitars, bass, cello, Admiral Korg, keyboard and piano, computer, drums and percussion, harmonica, mouth harp, televisions and vocals—is played by Lloyd. He also wrote the songs (obviously) and recorded them himself at home.

The tracklist is culled from over 200 songs bursting out of a blue box in his bedroom, and the album’s disjointed template is set within five minutes of pressing play. A swoosh-shhh-swoosh backwards spinning record quickly segues into the second track’s alt-country. “Cold Hands” even switches direction mid-track. It starts off eagerly, with loud cymbals crashing over Lloyd’s understated turn of phrase, but ends with a stripped-back sawing double bass. It was this rambling quality that led me to believe it was a debut on first listen. Like many great debuts, it is 20 tracks of at least 10 different types of great songs that take a sticky-taped ball of influences in different directions.

He says it’s because he gets tired of the music and thinks the songs are too long for anyone to listen to—so he leaves out the odd verse of a song, and slaps on the occasional indie rock version of the hip hop skit (“Thank You, 1986,” “These are the Beautiful Flowers Which Nobody Wants”). There are beats (“Catch Fire!”), acidic squiggles (“Don’t Be a Hero”), repetitive loops and classic pop songs (rendered ala lo-fi dirt). And in a post-Broken Social Scene world that’s no bad thing, though fortunately Lloyd wasn’t tempted to draft in a rapper.

His influences are stamped all over album—if you want to see them, check out his myspace site. Don’t miss the trees for the forest though. Within the mess of lo-fi production, nods to alt-country royalty and odd little skits, there are some really great songs.

The beautiful “Sketches” is breezy and understated like Sam Prekop with Jim O’Rourke on guitar. A wistful harmonica belies the underlying pad of 4/4 house drums. Immediately afterwards, “The Greatest Symphony” is another highlight. The levels are blown out across the board—each time the guitar twangs all the red buttons must light up on his mixing desk—but the song is perfect. It has the immediate familiarity that makes Wilco so easy to listen to, and although his voice is similar, it’s muted in comparison to Jeff Tweedy’s confident enunciation.

He whispers his songs into the microphone, they’re buried way down low in the mix—he says it’s because he can’t sing and whoever’s judging Idol would probably agree—the songs slip out with his breaths, in and out, rather than any enunciated message. I get the feeling that it’s something that he hardly wants to share, but it gets out anyway. Is he talking to you, me or himself as he chants softly “Here goes nothing….” I guess, sitting in his studio at home and recording these songs, he probably is talking to himself, wondering what the hell he’s risking. Whatever it was seems to have paid off.