Putting the Days to Bed (2006)

An underappreciated songwriter, The Long Winters frontman John Roderick has a flair for undercutting his hopeless romanticism with stinging self-awareness. The singer's engaging internal battle is apparent on Putting the Days to Bed's country-flecked ''Hindsight,'' where he longingly looks back on a torn relationship with barbs like ''You never told me your secrets/So I guess they stay safe with me.'' Marked by clean-cut choruses that alternate between punchy and pretty, Roderick's knotty tales never wrap up neatly — and they're all the better for it.