Record Rack

*** The Bicycle Thief, “You Come and Go Like a Pop Song,” Goldenvoice. If people remember Bob Forrest at all, six years after his last record with Thelonious Monster, it’s probably as the L.A. rock scene’s quintessential loser--an eccentric, ingratiating talent who caught all the breaks and quickly squandered them.

Forrest knows it too, and his first album with his new group is a scrappy, sprawling jumble of regret, defiance, despair, anger and hope. “So many things used to mean so much to me, but now I just can’t remember what they are,” he sings in his weary twang, as the Bicycle Thief’s acoustic-grounded garage-rock gathers around his rolling narrative.

With his disarming candor, Forrest doesn’t always make himself likable, but his refusal to contrive a storybook redemption gives weight to the small triumphs he does allow. The greatest of them is unspoken but unmistakable in every one of these brave and touching performances: his rediscovery of music’s purity and power.

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Albums are rated on a scale of one star (poor), two stars (fair), three stars (good) and four stars (excellent). The albums are already released unless otherwise noted.