There is one only thing that separates Josh Clayton-Felt from any other recent major-label debut recording artist-he’s dead. His album, Spirit Touches Ground, was released close to two years after Clayton-Felt died on cancer in April 2000.

Knowing this, it is especially hard to say that this album isn’t anything of great wonder or excitement.

There are no end-of-life revelations and few bits of wisdom, just songs about nothing in particular.

Produced and engineered by Clayton-Felt himself, this stinks of creativity run amuck.

Most of the songs are long and overly complicated, with arrangements that detract from the song rather than add to it.

This is a great example of why separate producers exist in the first place. In the song “Kid on the Train,” Clayton-Felt tries his darndest to add in every instrument he can get his little hands on to add on to this silly song about a kid sitting on a train.

Instead of covering over the weak points of the song, the extra instrumentation sticks out like a bad paint job. This is much the same story for “Night of a Thousand Girls.”

The most irritating thing about this album is Clayton-Felt’s obsession with sounding funky and groovy on his songs. It’s a nice trick every once in a while, but he tries it at least six times on a 14-song album! It’s as though he used the same drum loop for all these songs and thought no one would notice.

The irony is that his best work is when he strips it down and has a quieter feel. “Half-Life” is a great little folk song because it is so uncluttered and direct. The only instruments were a guitar, scant keyboards, a quiet bass and a drum part.

This is also true for the hidden gem of the album, “Already Gone.” It is just Clayton-Felt on guitar for the most part, with cello and keyboard touches, and it’s perfectly done.

One might think this song is full of prophecy about his death, but on further inspection it is more about breaking up with a cheating girlfriend than dying. (Like I said, a song about nothing in particular.) Still, it is a beautiful ballad all the same.

It is always strange to listen to posthumously released albums, knowing these songs are a person’s final feelings and emotions before their death.

It is nice to know that Clayton-Felt’s recorded thoughts were not of death and sorrow, but of girls and trees and stupid stuff like that. Except for the few ardent fans of singer-songwriters, I would suggest not looking too hard for this album; it’s an anticlimax waiting to happen. Grade: C