Chuck Timely and The Hourglass      Artist: Role ModelGenre: Country rockLabel: InterscopeThe lost art of lumbering your album with a ridiculously convoluted title is revived by New England songwriter Role Model – real name Tucker Pillsbury – who sets the controls for the heart of the 70s with his third LP, Chuck Timely and the Hourglass.The mouthful of a name has echoes of the glam-era pretensions of Elton John’s Captain Fantastic and the Brown Dirt Cowboy, or David Bowie’s The Rise and Fall of Ziggy Stardust and the Spiders from Mars. But there is lots of substance to go with vintage sheen on this cheerily ramshackle listen. Old school with a vengeance, it finds 29-year-old Pillsbury cobbling together glam rock guitars, boogie woogie piano and straight-from-the-barstool lyrics about losing your heart and spilling your drink.The sense of having tumbled back to the past is crowned by the character of Chuck Timely, whose adventures Pillsbury chronicles over the course of the record. This is an alter ego whom Pillsbury has imagined as existing across many musical timelines, variously hanging out with Michael Jackson during the recording of Thriller whilst striking up a friendship with Olivia Rodrigo.When younger artists are self-conscious about looking to the past, the results can be underwhelming – if not terrifying. We have, after all, just about emerged from the never-ending nightmare that was the Mumford and Sons boom-stomp-clap scene and its many after-echoes. Pillsbury is a more sincere and serious artist, untroubled by Mumfordian smarm. At no point does he come across as a dilettante larking about in other people’s achievements. The vibe is 70s country rock with all the extras. Opener Chuck’s Mantra, for instance, sounds like something Kris Kristofferson might have dashed off between movie roles. Which is apt as Pillsbury is dropping his new record shortly before he makes his acting debut in Lena Dunham’s Good Sex, where he features opposite Natalie Portman, Meg Ryan and Mark Ruffalo. There’s plenty of Hollywood lustre here too, with his rumoured girlfriend Dakota Johnson contributing a knowingly coy spoken word fade-out to the Lee Hazlewood-esque outlaw psychedelia of Love I You. Pillsbury is a talented picker of pockets – though not all of his songwriting hits the mark. His eagerness to connect with the audience occasionally stumbles into pandering. That is clear on the ghastly single High Hopes 3000, which sounds like Billy Ray Cyrus’s Achy Breaky Heart minus the humour and the ridiculousness.Such lapses are mercifully rare. After that schmaltzy low, he immediately cranks up the quality control and the rest of the record is a pleasure. Singing in a measured, folksy whine, Pillsbury variously evokes the Laurel Canyon dark humour of Warren Zevon on honky-tonk dirge Song Is All You Get and goes full Harry Nilsson on the luminescent country-rock ballad Joy.The theme of the album is the importance of love in our lives and how the freedom of being single is ultimately revealed to be hollow and meaningless. Such, at least, has been Pillsbury’s experience since his split from fashion influencer Emma Chamberlain – the subject of his break-up hit, Sally, When the Wine Runs Out. But while the idea of a 20-something whingeing about being rendered (briefly) single sounds unappealing, not to say unoriginal, Pillsbury keeps the listener engaged by constantly finding new ways to make his thoroughly everyday angst feel urgent and raw.It’s an LP that remains in constant motion. He even touches the live rail of yacht rock on Harmony. Here he conveys a genuine passion for the genre rather than coming across as someone who is giggling in his sleeves at the Doobie Brothers. It isn’t original, but it is heartfelt. And that, in the end, is its saving grace.