The land that Mark Mulcahy treks through is one that spills out all of its colorful miscellany at every possible turn. His songs are marvels. Sometimes he gives them their fringe details the seriousness that they deserve and other times he treats them the way that we treat all of the oddities that we take photographs of and post on Instagram these days. He just throws them out there and lets them stand on their own - amazed that he just saw such a thing, walked right up to it and snapped it for his collection. He'll chronicle it without irony - marking it down as an experience that could have gotten away, but didn't. Many of the songs on his fantastic new record, "Dear Mark J. Mulcahy, I Love You," carry with them a very earnest reverence for the beautiful alleyways that can be taken in life. His favorite details and his best moments are those that smack a bit as whimsy. They are the parts to the story where he speaks between the lines, where there's always more going on below the surface. The characters that he writes into these songs are true characters - spectacularly rich and interesting, filled with endless capacity for noting and conveying the poignant and the absurd as one and the same.