Pete Yorn has quietly hollowed out a dedicated, critically-unabated audience for himself. Why not? He’s handsome; he plays Americana-tinged trad-rock that’s seen a commercial resurgence lately thanks to the baffling rise of Kings of Leon, and his songs aren’t too bad either. He has the charming, heartsick guitar-slinger persona down – to the point where he opens a song on his latest self-titled record with a sheepish “I think I’ve never been in love” and remain entirely in character.

But still, Pete Yorn is Pete Yorn, and an album called Pete Yorn coming a decade deep in a careersounds exactly as you’d expect it to. Its best moments, (‘Rock Crowd,’ ‘Stronger Than,’ ‘Velcro Shoes’) never escape the urban, full-bodied rock ‘n’ roll foundation he’s so lovingly obliged to. Fellow east-coaster Frank Black handled the production, which might hint at the denser arrangements and deeper sonics – and as a whole the record is certainly a bit louder than his other work, but there’s nothing drastically different here. His graveled voice, the dusty textures – Yorn has always struggled to stand out from the sea of similar singer-songwriters, as such Pete Yorn simply sounds like another pretty-good album from a musician whose presence continues to be rather negligible.

However, most of the songs work, and you’d be hard-pressed to find a fundamental rock album as independently pleasing as this one. The individual performances are great, and Yorn’s punctured rasp is one of the best things going in modern rock music, with those ingredients it’s hard not to craft something at least superficially pleasing. Detraction is so easy when the music isn’t breaking in a new direction or hitching its wagon to a greater scene, but honestly most of the time I’m too caught up in the elemental irresistibility of Pete Yorn’s songs to worry about that. You should too.