When a band member who has spent most of the time standing in the singer’s shadow decides to step out into the sunlight, the results can be rather varied in quality. Who would ever have thought that Radiohead’s Phil Selway had some lovely folk songs hidden up his sleeve? On the other hand, the less said about Spiral Stairs’ efforts away from the safety of Pavement, the better.

Jim Fairchild finds himself caught between these two stools; for 11 years he was the beardless guitarist, and Jason Lytle’s sounding board, in the wonderful Granddaddy, and now his day job finds him as Isaac Brock’s sideman in Modest Mouse. When he’s not doing that, Fairchild is self-releasing records as All Smiles, with Staylow and Mighty his third album under that moniker. On this record of ramshackle pop he’s enlisted Modest Mouse band mate Joe Plummer, Gary Jarman of The Cribs and Menomena’s Danny Seim to flesh out songs in his practice space and home studio.

What’s immediately surprising, other than the rather brief ‘Escalon, Decades Ago’, is how unlike Granddaddy this record sounds. In fact, the best reference points would be Modest Mouse and Built To Spill, the latter especially so as Fairchild’s fragile (but limited) vocals recall Doug Martsch’s keening style.

Opener ‘Captives’ has muscular Modest Mouse style guitar work, before the jaunty ‘First Sign of Snow’ sets the tone for the rest of the record. It’s a melodic, angular affair, with layers of atmospherics and while it’s pleasant enough I just can’t get excited about it – like the rest of the record, it’s decent but not particularly memorable.

There are, though, great moments to be found. ‘Trying to Wake You’ has a meandering charm showcasing Fairchild’s nimble guitar work, and ‘Virgil Shaw’ is a broken acoustic ramble that has a Bright Eyes feel to it, with some twinkling keyboard and glockenspiel, and harmonies courtesy of the hired hands Jarman and Seim.

There’s also ‘Where the Feathers Fell’ and ‘Sun, Number Two’, both well-crafted pop songs that fizz along nicely but then the record dramatically falls away during the last three songs. ‘My Son, The Future’, ‘Diana’s Throne’ and ‘Totem’ all drift by lacking earworm melodies, rendering them instantly forgettable.

It’s hard to decide if I’m overly critical about this record. Is it fair to compare Staylow and Mighty to Fairchild’s work in Granddaddy and Modest Mouse? These are two bands that have probably defined over a decade of alternative music for some people, and with a record like The Sophtware Slump looming large in your past there must be a part of you that worries whether it’ll live up to what’s gone before. So I think it best simply to judge the album on its own merits, and as such it’s only fair to say that it’s an okay record, something I reckon I’d also say if I’d never heard of Jim Fairchild before.

Don’t get me wrong, it’s nowhere near being an awful record and there are some great moments that show why Fairchild was, and is, valued by Jason Lytle and Isaac Brock. In fact, I would recommend that if you’ve not heard of him, have a listen to All Smiles; it’s the sort of music that “alternative” should be – inventive, independent and passionate – and that’s something we should never be overly critical of on this site. Self-releasing records and the promotion of vinyl alongside the digital download are two admirable things – what All Smiles wants next is to make sure the music becomes something we need to hear, and with Jim Fairchild’s service record I’m certain this is possible.