Beware the press kit. When Brian Perry’s last CD, Intentionally, was released, I was quoted in these pages as saying that he was the “South Louisiana Springsteen.” Actually, I was referring to his lyrical potential as a storyteller, but you who bought the album will be gratified to know that, creative quoting aside, that evolution is continuing apace with his new release, Birmingham.

Musically, he shares an acoustic intensity with the Boss (especially on “Iowa,” which mines the same field of quiet desperation as Bruce’s “I’m On Fire”), and a definite ability to take ordinary lives and blow them up to Great American Novel-size magnitude. The overall sonic effect is more in the Counting Crows-style of sensitive middle-of-the-road college rock. In fact, the music’s so generic and familiar that you may find yourself skimming over the cavernous depth of the lyrics. Here’s how he characterizes “Desire”: “Adam and Eve had it easy / One and One / Whatcha gonna do? / Give me an apple any day / Rather than the 3 billion of you.”

That verse aside, however, Birmingham is more lyrically and musically upbeat than its predecessors, yet no less introspective. The whole CD serves as a song cycle of a breakup, from the initial rapture to the final disillusionment and the resolute determination that signals the healing. In Perry’s world, there are no regrets, just mistakes corrected, and that goes for himself on the album’s closer, “Don’t Wanna Go Back There,” just as it goes for the less-than-heartbroken girl on “In The Meantime.”

So he’s not the Southern Springsteen, quite. (There is a dramatically significant car crash on “Iowa,” but he’s not in it.) However, he is worth celebrating as one of the Deep South’s best lyricists. And you can quote me on that.