Like his frequent touring mate Josh Rouse, Howie Beck excels at pretty, mid-tempo ballads designed to make listeners feel wistful. On his third album, the modestly titled howie beck, the singer-songwriter practically provides a model for his sound with the easygoing "Sometimes," which backs Beck's airy voice with bells, thick bass, buzzing synthesizers, and distorted guitar, yet never sounds overly busy. But "Sometimes" is an exception on an album where, by and large, the production seems to be propping up the songs. On the silly "Zombie Girl" and the earnest "The Books Beside Her Bed" alike, the sophisticated instrumentation only masks the songs' basic shallow minimalism—a flaw exposed when Beck goes stark, as on the banjo-backed, derivative "We Waited." Then again, the soft netting that surrounds howie beck does sound nice in and of itself, especially when Beck wraps it tight around a song like "Floating," where the string section flattens the bounce with notes of menace.