“Fake Records” is an early indication that the forthcoming Is and Always Was is not the usual Daniel Johnston. It could be a great song, offering up a perfect set-piece for the music obsessive Johnston, but feels slightly artificial, veering heavily into straightforward, glossily produced rock-record territory, like its own caricature. It’s either a very awkward try at a not at all awkward song, or a brilliant ploy, poking fun at his subject through the very method of the joke’s delivery. Eschewing his usual lo-fi take on fractured pop, Johnston emerges with a fully realized studio album. It takes a bit of getting used to at first, almost like watching your favorite movie in color for the first time. The best moments are revelatory, like the loose, low, buzzing guitar that opens “Mind Movies”, providing the perfect backdrop for Johnston’s plain, slightly awkward, lisping delivery. The title track offers spacey strumming as Johnston reels through cosmically charged mutterings, creating a perfect psych-pop piece that follows into “Lost in My Infinite Memory.” “Without You” comes across as an homage to 70s pop-rock acts, with riffing piano and intermingling synths. This isn’t so much a departure for Johnston as it is a re-imagining, or perhaps a fuller realization of the ideas that were with him all along. As the man himself puts it, “Everyone needs to take their demos and go back to the studio.” With the Dead Science. (Photo courtesy Tyron Francis.) NICHOLAS HALL

Fri., Sept. 4, 8 p.m., 2009