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Tiers and Other Stories, the latest opus from pop auteur Richard X. Heyman, is at once both ambitious and modest. The ambition comes from its structure as a two-disk concept record (or “popera,” according to its creator), but the modesty comes from the subject matter: disk one covers his courtship of his wife/engineer/bassist Nancy Leigh, while disk two rambles through their subsequent life together. Eschewing his usual guitar-based approach, the album leans on piano as its main instrument, giving the songs a Todd Rundgren feel, leavened by Zombies and Beach Boys fixations (especially on the string-heavy second disk). His melodic method is as sharp as ever, with “The Real Deal,” “No Time to Rest on Sunday” and “Hustler’s Last Stand” shot through with winsome sparkle. Heyman’s excellent tunesmithery allows him to get away with the occasional clumsy lyric, like “I was too acquainted with the old acquaintance” from “Good To Go,” not to mention the pun in the title of the harpsichord-driven instrumental “Going For Baroque.” But when he couples a bon mot of casual yearning like “If you ever want me I’m only half a world away” with a melody as lovely as that of “Yellow and Blue,” the record really shines. One could make the usual argument for double LPs, of course, which is that the project might have been more successful with the strongest tracks from each disk combined into one gem-packed killer. But that would have been a betrayal of Heyman’s vision, and it would have meant tough choices in any case. It may not rock much, but as an audio valentine to a muse, Tiers and Other Stories rolls nicely.
