Sometimes you’re blessed with an interview subject who’s smart, lucid and funny. Cory Branan was all three when I talked to him earlier this month for Spinner about his new album, “Mutt.” As he explains, the title is also a description of the music: there’s a little bit of a lot of things, from folk and country to blues and rock ‘n’ roll.

It’s Branan’s first new album in six years, a delay that afforded him time to write a backlog of nearly 100 songs. That, he said, is a blessing and a curse.

“I could never do a record without putting a lot of new stuff on it,” Branan said. “That’s my hangup: I hate all my songs except for the last one I wrote, or maybe the one I’m working on.”

Read the interview here, and listen to “Mutt” here.