On the heels of From a Compound Eye, Dayton, Ohio resident Robert Pollard's much-lauded first post-Guided By Voices effort, comes Normal Happiness, a stylistic hopscotch-jop from F.A.C.E., but no less coherent, fully-formed, and accomplished. If the idea of Pollard as meticulous song-craftsfman strikes a false note in your head, maybe you need to have your brain tuned. His albums, to go by the available evidence (excluding side-projects and novelty records), are becoming steadily more steady, thematically coherent, and musically lucid, which has a lot to do with exactly three things: 1) his blossoming partnership with producer Todd Tobias; 2) his freedom from the self-imposed shackles of GBV; and 3) his apparent determination to age gracefully.