Judging from the new pseudonym, Jim Fairchild couldn’t be enjoying the solo life more. Even on “Early Man,” what with its playfully waltzy guitars and touches of fluttering flutes and tambourines, seems to say that Fairchild’s post-Grandaddy career is off to an optimistic start with All Smiles’ Ten Readings of a Warning. Now on his own, Fairchild begins to take the Graham Coxon route, eschewing his previous band’s more artistic songwriting approach for a collection of lighter, more acoustic-guitar-driven pop songs.

Ten Readings of a Warning has the kind of open, uplifting sound that brings to mind basking in the sun in a grassy field or enjoying a picnic by the seashore; even closer "Of Course it's Not Up to Me," the record's most melancholy tune, ends Warning on a positive note, kept afloat by Fairchild's hopeful vocal melodies. Apart from Fairchild’s unassuming, Jeff-Tweedy-meets-Elliott-Smith vocals, the rest of Warning’s instrumentation proves to be a departure from Grandaddy in its fairly straightforward arrangement, relying almost entirely on Fairchild’s acoustic guitar and piano, augmented only occasionally by a brief guitar solo or a faint hint of electric keyboard.

All Smiles’ songwriting is refreshing for its simplicity, and his affinity for the beloved verse/chorus/verse/chorus/outro formula often yields pleasantly catchy results (notably the delightfully breezy “Summer Stay” and the more Built-to-Spill-y “Moth in a Cloud of Smoke”), but towards the album’s second half, All Smiles’ formulaic charm starts to wear off a bit, leaving downtempo numbers like “I Know It’s Wrong” and “Leave Love” sounding a bit too repetitive to be memorable. Jim Fairchild doesn’t sound confident enough in his songwriting abilities just yet for Ten Readings of a Warning to be his official first departure as a solo artist, but if Warning’s better moments are any indication, All Smiles are hardly out of things to say.