Sonny Smith, the man behind the prolific Sonny and the Sunsets clearly likes to keep himself busy. Aside from releasing an album a year for the past few years he also undertook, in 2010, the barmy mission of creating 100 fictional bands, their bios and two songs (the A and B sides of a single) for each band as part of an art project called 100 Records. These records see the light of day through the occasional release on vinyl, the last one being a single by the fantastically-named Zig Speck and the Specktones. But it’s under the Sonny and the Sunsets moniker that Smith spends most of his time, with last year’s excellent Hit After Hit proving to be his best record yet. 11 tracks of tightly-wound garage pop recalling Jonathan Richman and the Nuggets series, it was a perfect encapsulation of the modern San Francisco sound and found Smith bracketed alongside the likes of Ty Segall and The Fresh and Onlys as part of a burgeoning SF scene. However, new album Longtime Companion completely eschews the garage-pop sound for an album of country music recorded with help from his country band The Fuckaroos.

Like many country albums, it’s a record of love and heartbreak, and was recorded following his break up with his long-term (the longtime companion of the record) girlfriend. The music recalls The Byrds’ rodeo country period, and inevitably adds a dash of Bob Dylan – something that’s almost unavoidable due to Smith sharing Bob’s laconic delivery and wit – but it doesn’t work out as a completely successful venture. Smith misses out on the brevity of The Byrds and is never quite as biting as Dylan, meaning that tracks like ‘Children of the Beehive’ (despite containing the lines “My one and only love/My babe, the divorcee”) and ‘Year of the Cock’ turn from pleasant strums into attention-challenging meanderings. Then some of the shorter tracks, like ‘Sea of Darkness’ and ‘My Mind Messed Up’, seem like too much of a pastiche of country breakup songs to be taken particularly seriously, which I’m sure wasn’t Smith’s intention at all.

There are some great moments, however, which show that Sonny and the Sunsets shouldn’t completely discard the idea of making more country records. ‘Dried Blood’ has duelling guitars worthy of McGuinn and Crosby and rattles along wonderfully with Smith confessing he’s been drinking too much since the breakup; ‘Pretend You Love Me’ is a tender ballad with an underlying groove that could have been penned by Stephen Stills; and of the more upbeat tracks the instrumental ‘Rhinestone Sunset’ steams along like a train driven by The Man In Black, and ‘I See the Void’ is bitterly black-hearted as Smith sings “When I look into your eyes/I see the void”. Final (and title) track ‘Longtime Companion’ finds Smith in denial mode, singing, over loose pedal steel and organ, “I’m going to try and make you love me/I’m going to try… to make you care”. Underneath it all, as the pedal steel whines away, there’s a feeling of acceptance as the record draws to a close that the relationship must do the same.

The problem with Longtime Companion is that it’s not quite attention-grabbing enough; there’s a feeling that Smith is holding a little bit back in his attempt at making a genre record, and so by not completely committing to the moment this Sonny and the Sunsets record suffers. Someone as prolific as Sonny Smith is always going to have his hits and misses when making music, though, so the chances are that whatever comes next will be an altogether more successful affair.