Best known to pop culture as the frontman for Seattle’s Screaming Trees, Mark Lanegan ventures out on his own again with Field Songs. It’s easy to understand Lanegan's appeal; it's all in his delivery, a throaty rumble that comfortably tells tales that have been left behind because they couldn’t keep up in a world moving too fast. The voice is haunting and textured, yet flawed in all the right ways.

Field Songs is a fragile, thoughtful record strengthened by the purposeful direction of Lanegan’s poetry, which never lingers longer than necessary and sometimes isn’t there at all. The languid, sensual feel of "Blues for D" is punctuated by its lack of vocals, though you can somehow still sense words screaming through the guitar-work like amputated limbs. Here, Lanegan seems to capture the real secret of blues: no matter how bad it hurts, hurting still feels more like something than the nothing of loneliness.

As a first time listener, it’s easy to become engrossed in the smoky self-examination and emotional turmoil, but the album's subject material and tone often tread the same road of sorrow and fleeting redemption, and you start to wonder if, in time, Field Songs could collapse under the weight of its own seriousness. It’s a certain self-indulgence that gives Lanegan’s sound its flavor, yet could ultimately become a sour taste in a longtime listener’s mouth if used too often.

Whether Lanegan has gone to the well one too many times or not, he still writes with a wickedly powerful pen -- and songs like "Kimiko’s Dream House" and "No Easy Action" are still light years ahead of the curve.