CASE GETS REAL

“PETER CASE.” Peter Case. Geffen. “Do you want a man of steel / Or do you want a man that’s real?” sings Peter Case, obliquely explaining why the two-fisted rock ‘n’ roller who led the Plimsouls through the L.A. club wars has become an acoustic-guitar-strumming troubadour striving for a brand of alternately hard-bitten and dreamy Americana.

His disillusionment with rock ‘n’ roll’s artifice sent him into a long series of bare guitar-and-harmonica performances around town, and in his solo album debut he’s tried to strike a middle ground. Case holds up natural instrumentation as the model of purity and integrity, but blends in enough rootsy rock to keep from antiquing out.

With resourceful melodies, Lennonesque vocals and economically sketched lyrics, Case’s songs pan the American landscape, observing a buried miner’s deliverance (“Three Days Straight”), celebrating the magic of the battered heap (the rock-riffing “Old Blue Car”) and recounting an eerie rural mystery (“Walk in the Woods”).

The variety of settings helps keep things moving: A sitar buzzes like humming power lines to launch the eastbound Sun Belt odyssey that leads to “Satellite Beach,” a spare string arrangement lends poignancy to a pensive study of an old friend’s turn to crime in “Small Town Spree.” In “Ice Water,” guitar and harmonica lock in a tight, jumping Delta blues, and the rolling Irish ballad “Brown Eyes” leads us into the troubled mind of a war-damaged rover.

Some of the arrangements are too meticulous, resulting in an overly formal art-folk that lacks the full flavor he’s after. For the most part, though, Case has cooked up a rich, resonant debut.