With a voice that goes flat at the darnedest moments and songs that dissect the unbearable ugliness of being, former American Music Club leadman Mark Eitzel has taken the art of the confessional songwriter to the whipping post. He'd be wallowing even deeper in his misery if he weren't such an accomplished lyricist, his wounded sincerity spiked with the darkest, drollest humor of any misanthrope this side of Morrissey.

And just as Morrissey had Johnny Marr to help him funnel his obsessions into multidimensional pop music with the Smiths, Eitzel has found a perfect foil in R.E.M. guitarist Peter Buck. The two wrote Eitzel's second solo release, West, in three days, then recorded it with assorted all-stars from the Northwest rock scene, including members of Buck's instrumental band, Tuatara. The result is an Eitzel album that isn't just for wrist slashers, a disc that skips lightly even when the singer is contemplating what it feels like to be just "another drip lost in the Milky Way."

The beautiful opener, the cigarette and whiskey nocturne "If You Have to Ask," concludes with Eitzel whistling off into the darkness as if intending to rekindle the Chet Baker-isms of his low-key solo debut, 60 Watt Silver Lining. The neojazz setting gets nastier on "Three Inches of Wall," though (thanks to a strangulated sax solo by Tuatara's Skerik), then shivers with paranoia on "Then It Really Happens." Eitzel's ravaged croon is particularly suited to these nonrock rhythms, but it also slides deftly into the garage groove of "Move Myself Ahead," the tambourine-inflected guitar strum of "Free of Harm" and the pure power pop of "In Your Life."

As West winds down, Eitzel moans over a smoky piano that "no one cares if I live or die." But if Eitzel keeps making music this inviting, he'll be forced to reconsider. (RS 762)

GREG KOT