Todd Snider is perhaps the quintessential post-modern troubadour, toiling away on the folk and Americana circuits year after year, never gaining a hit but always enlarging his audience. For a while, it seemed as though Snider could ride the post-Nirvana alt-rock wave that brought contemporaries like Jill Sobule a single hit, but his 1994 debut, Songs for the Daily Planet, peaked at number 23 on Billboard's Heatseeker chart, with its accompanying single "Talkin' Seattle Grunge Rock Blues" proved not to be a novelty fluke. That very title hints at the humor that distinguishes Snider's catalog, but his lively, witty songs also dig emotionally deeper, which is why he has sustained a career for decades after that 1994 debut, sometimes cresting into the charts -- Devil You Know reached number four on the Heatseekers charts in 2006; The Excitement Plan made it to number 144 on the Hot 100 in 2009; Agnostic Hymns & Stoner Fables reached number 95 in 2012 -- but always maintaining an audience devoted to his wry quips and heart-rending ballads, a style that was showcased well on 2021's First Agnostic Church of Hope and Wonder.