Todd Snider

This Nashville roots-rock veteran is a songwriter’s songwriter: He’s made albums for both Jimmy Buffett’s and John Prine’s record labels, and he devotes the liner notes of his latest disc not to his lyrics but to the stories behind his lyrics. They’re pretty great stories, too: In “You Got Away with It (A Tale of Two Fraternity Brothers),” Snider imagines President Bush in college as a hippie-terrorizing rugby bully, while in “The Highland Street Incident” he re-creates the night he was mugged in Memphis from the sympathetic point of view of the muggers—ironclad evidence of what Snider described in a recent interview as his “flaming liberal” streak.

About half of The Devil You Know (Snider’s eighth full-length) emphasizes the songwriter’s skills with stripped-down acoustic-folk arrangements that sound like they were created a few minutes before the band laid them down. But a handful of rowdier cuts show that Snider has stylistic tricks up his sleeve, as well: Opener “If Tomorrow Never Comes” rides a breakneck “Johnny B. Goode” groove, the title track buzzes with wild surf-rock electricity, and “Looking for a Job” would’ve been at home on one of the Rolling Stones’ scuzzy early-’70s albums. The ample pleasures here come from familiar places, yet Snider gives everything a renewed gleam. — Mikael Wood

Todd Snider plays Canal Room Wed 16.