Thanks to the hazy psych-pop he crafted with the Dream Syndicate in the '80s, Steve Wynn will always be intimately associated with California.

"Every record I've made in my life up until this one, I've recorded with a band. From Dream Syndicate to solo records to Gutterball, everything I've done has been in a studio with three or four or five other musicians around me, just hammering it out and then fine-tuning it after that. This was the first time I've made a record where it was just made piece by piece by piece — and with me playing almost everything. You're just going to get more of your personality in it that way. You're not responding to the people around you, which is what usually I do. You're responding to what's going on inside your own head and the things that you did five minutes ago. When I hear this record, it feels much more like a personal record, a reflection of what was going on in my head at the time.

There's no reason you can't make great records in the same city with the same players for your whole life. But that's not the way it works for me. For me, being surprised, having things shaken up, works really well. I get most of my ideas — and get most excited — when things are surprising to me. Going to another city and working with new people is the best way to do it."

"The longer you've been doing stuff, the more you need something to shake yourself up, the more you need new ideas to not get stale. I'd wanted to work with Chris Eckman for a long time. I like what he does; I really like in particular the way — as a member of the Walkabouts and also in records he produced — the way he mixes rock music with classical elements and [is] true to both camps. It doesn't feel schlocky or tacked on or grafted onto something where it shouldn't be. He puts those two things together really well. Not a lot of people get a chance to do this, but there's something about being in an unfamiliar place by yourself for a long period of time, that really gets you to rethink things, to not skim the surface on things, which you might otherwise."

Recorded in Ljubljana, the capital of Slovenia, the record is a tasteful mix of Americana and Eastern European sounds, woven tightly together by Wynn's always compelling narratives.

Once regarded as a junior Neil Young-cum-Lou Reed, Wynn has forged a critically-acclaimed career that's lasted into his middle age and is still going strong, much like those of his forebears. And like Young and Reed, Wynn may not be selling as many units as he did when he was younger, but for the audience that's continued to follow him as they've both aged, the rewards are rich.

With incredible detail and poetic grace, Wynn weaves tales of love and other personal perils on Crossing Dragon Bridge. “Manhattan Fault Line” is an autobiographical anecdote as well as a tongue in cheek twist on the warnings of LA’s certain earthquake-related demise (“This city could drop in a minute or two/Stunned and surprised but one hell of a ride”), and “Love Me Anyway” is one of the finest and most heart-wrenching self-examinations ever put on record, as the protagonist reveals a personality defined by both darkness and vulnerability. The entire song is quotable, but when Wynn sings that “Love is never easy, love is never free/ If it’s seems that easy, you’re not doing it properly” just sums up every relationship that has, does, or will ever exist.

If you believe that there are still musicians in the world who can find the words that you never could, and these writers are truly deserving of the word genius, then go and scoop this masterpiece up right now.

Steve Wynn Returns: Former Dream Syndicate frontman/paisley underground enabler Steve Wynn has been on a roll lately, releasing a disc with the Baseball Project (his collaboration with Young Fresh Fellow Scott McCaughey and R.E.M.'s Peter Buck, among others) and joining with the Teenaged Prayers in a band called Hazel Motes (named, it's a safe bet, for Flannery O'Connor's Wise Blood heroine). But he also has a new disc out under his own name.

Crossing Dragon Bridge was recorded in Ljubljana, Slovenia (current home of Chris Eckman, co-founder of Seattle band the Walkabouts and the disc's producer) and is Wynn's first solo album in seven years. It's almost certainly his best in fifteen years, if not ever. A spartan folk album with overlays of choirs, string sections and various effects, it's echoey and hallucinatory and displaced-feeling, both kin to and totally unlike anything Wynn has ever done. "Love Me Anyway" sounds like it would have fit nicely on a "We Are All Made Of Stars"-era Moby album, while the weirdly jaunty, thickly looped "Wait Until You Get To Know Me" ("I'm a finger of Scotch/In a dry Manhattan/I'm a car wreck/That's just waiting to happen") reminds that Wynn is one of the finest, if one of the most frequently neglected, songwriters of his generation.