By Kurt Wolff

IS IT ALWAYS nighttime in the songs of Jeffrey Luck Lucas? Not really, but it almost feels that way, what with the dark moodiness of his arrangements and the introspection and angst that permeate so many of his lyrics. And not just any night, either, but the kind that's always thick with a funky bourbon haze, where sleeplessness incarcerates your vision and all intentions of decency are transformed into blurry, oil-slicked puddles you carelessly drive over or step straight into. Things happen on nights like this – fortunes are squandered, souls misplaced. You wake up on the other side, and all you can think to do is pray.

"Hell, you ain't nothing to me," Lucas sings on "Old Mexico," in a voice that sounds scratchy and worn, like a man emerging from a lengthy bender, battered but unbowed and still willing to call the devil names. Behind him is an acoustic guitar, a simple arrangement clearly grounded in country music, yet there's another element too – like the distant shuffle of coyotes moving in the dark, or remnants of a hallucination not quite quelled by the coming dawn. Maybe it's the black-and-white images on the cover of Lucas's 2004 CD Hell Then Divine (Antebellum) that give it away, or the murky tone of his voice, but there's something unavoidably cinematic and noirish about it all.

That haunted mood and sound is the essence of Hell Then Divine, a knockout debut that's deep, slow-moving, and powerful. It's grounded in country, yes, a music for which Lucas has a longstanding love (he remembers "drives to the steakhouse in Indiana [he was born in Gary] when I was little with my grandpa, listening to Hank Williams and Ernest Tubb," he told me via e-mail). Still, that's only part of the story. Inside this music is also, as Lucas puts it, "a bit of everything I've experienced, from Lou Reed to Red Foley to Badalamenti to Cormac McCarthy to Joy Division."

Not to mention the landscape of the West, a region in which he spent some years growing up (from Gary, the family went to Maryland and then Texas) and in which as an adult he has done a good bit of traveling around. "I love the desert," Lucas says, "the climate, the people. There's something you can trust in someone who chooses to live on the edge of nowhere. You look in each other's eyes and know. Not a lot of questions – it's quiet, empty. And the stars are magnificent at night."

Some of his music feels deeply urban, like "Cascade," the shuddering, shimmering wonder of a song that opens the album. In other cases, though, you can practically hear the wind scraping across the desert sand, or moaning through the high-tension wires. That spooky quality comes thanks not just to the liberal use of pedal steel that permeates the melodies, or the whiskey-soaked twang that drives so many of the narratives. Like I said before, it's not all about the country.

For one thing, Lucas spent time as a member of San Diego garage rock band the Morlocks, who split up in 1986. That wild energy is buried in the song, despite the unhurried tempos and reflective moods. On the opposite end of the spectrum, however, the music shows hints of the avant-garde. Lucas, it turns out, is a classically trained cellist: he played the instrument from age 10 all the way through graduate school and also studied composition. The arrangements on Hell Then Divine feel not necessarily complex, but innovative, and when it does pop up, his cello work blends beautifully with the album's overall moods and sounds.

"Being able to think in terms other than traditional pop forms is a great benefit," Lucas explains. All that musical schooling gave him an ear for, as he puts it, "sound color," not to mention "a love of layers and texture" and a desire to create "minimalist gestures" that are able to "convey maximum emotive content."

And then there's the darker side. I ask Lucas his main inspirations for the album, and he responds, "Loners, losers, heartbreak, battles with alcohol, divorce."

Good lord, pulling from your own life is excellent practice, but those aren't the sorts of experiences you'd wish on anyone. "It all happens so fast," he muses, "like looking out a car window." Nonetheless, now that Lucas has made it out the other side and is still standing, it sure has contributed to creating some seriously intense and compelling songs. As he explains it, "I wanted Hell Then Divine to be able to convey a complex state of the spirit in a lucid, 'simple' way ... much like Hank Williams is able to do, but with my own language and personal ontology."

Don't be afraid of it, though. No doubt, Lucas's music certainly isn't light. Housewives won't be humming his songs in the aisles of the A&P anytime soon. At the same time that his tunes rattle your core, they're bristling with texture, but they're also immediately touching ... not to mention thoughtfully and carefully assembled. This is music that's fully grounded.

Picks of the litter

n. lannon In the work of San Francisco artist Nyles Lannon, the world of introspective indie folk melds smoothly and beautifully with that of electronica for a singer-songwriter experience that's at once familiar and adventurous. June 11, Swedish American Hall

Mushroom Tripping with this Bay Area prog jazz improv band means you're in for a smooth and supple ride, one upholstered in velvety tones of horns, guitars, and keyboards and driven by grooves of funk, psychedelia, and soul that hum, purr, and shimmy in just the right places. June 8, Galaxies

K.W.