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The world has too many earnest stool jockeys strumming their guitars and singing their diaries. With so many singer-songwriters with so little to say, it's a miracle that any needles ever jump out of this particular haystack.

But here is one, M. Ward, an underground bard from Portland, Ore., with a soft voice and a lo-fidelity aesthetic. Recorded largely in an attic, Ward's "Transistor Radio" opens with an instrumental Beach Boys cover, closes with a Bach piece and is dedicated to the last of the independent free-form radio stations — the kind of stations that would play this record's romping centerpiece, "Big Boat," a sex joke par excellence.

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SINGER-SONGWRITER • M. Ward "Transistor Radio." Merge. 16 tracks. Grade: A-

Not all of of "Transistor" is so freewheeling. Ward can also sound lonely and scared — "Four Hours in Washington" is a harrowing chronicle of insomnia, and "Radio Campaign" finds him begging for the return of his "little piece of mind."

But his quirky sensibility keeps him going. When he finds himself trapped in a "Deep Dark Well," he almost seems to enjoy the privacy.

— Nick Marino