You don’t often hear about an artist reinventing their sound nineteen solo albums into a celebrated career. But for Todd Snider, his latest release, First Agnostic Church of Hope and Wonder, isn’t so much a sudden change in direction as an arrival after years of searching.

Since debuting in 1994, Snider has gone through his own incarnations. His first single “Talking Seattle Blues” was a head fake that might’ve pointed to goofy novelty songs. But he quickly showed that his artistic quiver was much deeper and more interesting. A storyteller who works a similar creative soil to John Prine and Shel Silverstein, Snider’s best songs are both sad and funny, political and entertaining, and always written with a poet’s eye and a stand-up comedian’s sensibility about the follies of human condition. While he’s made ten fine albums, it’s on stage where Snider is even more potent, with between-song banter that weaves subtle emotional threads through his sets. A road dog who loves the road, Snider has toured with Emmylou Harris, John Prine, Jimmy Buffett, and appeared at festivals like Farm Aid, Americana Fest and Winnipeg Folk.

On his latest release, Snider playfully undermines typical sermon themes like faith can move mountains – on “Turn Me Loose (I’ll Never Be the Same”), he reckons “Mountains can get around just fine on their own – and finding meaning on mystical sojourns – “Oh, shit, I quit my job,” the truth seeker on “The Get Together” realizes in a panic.