"Here’s another song about an old hotel. A place you can rise in the same place you fell. To get lost in solitude and saved by yourself. And did I mention I’m alone as well?"

So, appropriately, begins Simon Joyner’s new album, Hotel Lives. It is expansively dark, slow, dry, long and undeniably gorgeous. The songs gradually unfold like a mountain road, meandering up to strange heights, then coming dangerously close to the edge, revealing the terrible existential abyss of life, love and the lack thereof.

Once again Joyner has collected an amazing array of supporting players: Will Hendicks, Glenn Kotchie, Michael Krassner and the requisite Fred Lonberg-Holm play minimally, but with a stunning amount of emotion and creativity. Their supportive arrangements and thoughtful, sometimes avant-garde touches perfectly occupy the lives of these songs, helping them to achieve an even greater level of maturity and importance. The sound is crystal clear, with that roomy sound and bouncy bass that recalls Bob Johntson’s masterful production of Leonard Cohen’s Songs from a Room.

Joyner's vocals may be an issue for some. Although his world-weary voice frequently cracks and slips out of tune, it shines with the perceptive confusion of a man who feels more than he knows. His unbearable emotions scatter through his big brain, rather like feeling claustrophobic in a desert...or like a tortured man, unable to fall asleep in his lonely hotel room.

"Hotel Suite" opens the album with a rumbling drumbeat driven by low cellos. The whole song, including his vaguely spiteful sneer, reminds me of Smog at his darkest and most poetic. "Insomnia" is a rambling acoustic song that picks up for a pleasing airy chorus. "The House" is one of the album's many acoustic dirges, but it also highlights Joyner’s unique songwriting; after he sings "She breaks everything she sees, everything she can see. That leaves me. For I’ve become invisible," the guitar and rhythm drop away, leaving only Lonberg-Holm's ephemeral string arrangement, before returning to the regular song. It’s these cinematic moments that make Hotel Lives brilliant.

"My Life is Sweet" is the album's most upbeat track, and one of its best overall, wandering somewhere between Van Morrison’s Astral Weeks and Dylan’s "Tangled up in Blue".

Though it sometimes seems as if Joyner has built his entire career on Leonard Cohen’s "Bird on a Wire", he’s compelling and creative enough to outstrip such criticism. Over the course of a few albums, he has become one of the most respectable and influential lyricist/singer/songwriters around, and this stark new album is a great indication why. It's essential for your next trip to the Chelsea.