Covers of Paul McCartney's "Silly Love Songs" and Yes' "Long Distance Runaround"; a title that nods to the poet Wallace Stevens; a chord progression nicked from Led Zeppelin's "Bron-Yr-Aur"; lyrics that coolly recall, "I felt nervous when you shook and cried" – you know, some albums just don't lend themselves to casual summary.

But then Red House Painters have never been easy to categorize. On Songs for a Blue Guitar, the Painters' singer and guitarist, Mark Kozelek, embellishes his typical graveyard folk with a Buddy Holly-ish rocker ("I Feel the Rain Fall"), a female-harmony vocal ("Song for a Blue Guitar") and storms of Neil Young-style guitar distortion ("Make Like Paper"). The effect is freshening, at once looser, more varied and more textured than the band has often sounded in the past.

Have no fear, however. Kozelek continues to view the world through a dark glass, documenting the descent of love into loss with unsettling detachment, as if emotion were something that could only be imagined, not felt. The singsong melody and childlike strumming of the album's concluding track, "Another Song for a Blue Guitar," reinforce that chilling distance: "And the one thing that I found/As I gazed at the sea/Was that she lost all hope/All hope in me." Finally, only Kozelek could transform McCartney's breezy query "How can I tell you about my loved one?" into an anguished statement about the impossibility of one person conveying his feelings to another.

Still looking for a quick summary? Aptly, Wallace Stevens best evokes the impact of these songs in his 1937 poem "The Man With the Blue Guitar": "The blue guitar/After long strumming on certain nights/Gives the touch of the senses, not of the hand/But the very senses as they touch/The wind-gloss." Exactly. (RS 741)

ANTHONY DECURTIS