Jon Dee Graham

Not since Dante has a man walked through hell and lived to tell the tale with such poetic beauty as Jon Dee Graham. The gory details, which have seeded everything from benefit concerts to a tribute album to innumerable painful ly funny horror stories from the man himself, needn’t be rehashed here; all that matters is that the battered and semi-broken former Skunk and True Believer is still standing — and mining the wreckage for the best songs of his life. Graham roars throughout It’s Not as Bad as It Looks with the ferocity of a wounded but still frightfully dangerous mountain lion, whether he’s punching holes in romantic myths about addiction and “God’s crippled little birds” (“Beautifully Broken,” featuring the most stinging — albeit affectionate — rebuttal to Neil Young this side of “Sweet Home Alabama”), or clinging for dear life to the frayed heartstrings of, well, a beauti- fully broken dream (“I Said”). It’s not all doom and gloom, though; Graham may chase nearly every grain of hope with a pinch of salt (as in “Gilead,” the best song Warren Zevon never wrote), but he’s not blind to the wonders of small blessings. “Best” may well be the most moving love song (or song, period) you’ll hear all year, and if “My Lucky Day” doesn’t light your carpe diem fire and make you wanna swing for the fences, you’re just not playing it loud enough.