Soul Coughing singer/guitarist M. Doughty is a study in contradiction. On the one hand, he's a scholar of bygone literary and musical styles, a loner who travels endlessly and whips out his journal in public places to monitor his mad genius. On the other, he's a pop-culture junkie whose recent obsessions include the Backstreet Boys, pinball, Starbucks and the "really good looking" Minnie Driver. Although he's up-front about many of these varied inspirations, in true laureate nature, he refuses to "play the influence game." Not surprising coming from the same guy who fears he's "going to have to be evasive on that one" and conveniently pretends "to have forgotten" the answers to edgy questions.

Soul Coughing's third album, El Oso, out tomorrow, finds Doughty still reciting his famed love letters, only this time it's to drum-and-bass-skewed rhythms, the result of recent jungle influences. And he's actually singing. "That's probably more of a product of me being on the road for a bunch of years and being sort of crab-walked into actually learning how to sing without really intending to," Doughty jokes. "I mean, I've always intended to learn how to sing."

The first single, "Circles," sticks like bubblegum and is already receiving healthy airplay. It's about -- no surprise here -- the trials of love games. But while El Oso remains true to Doughty's themes of the heart, it also explores an array of new topics as diverse as Pensacola and New York, two of the cities that show up on the album. "Houston" tells the tale of a friend of Doughty's who fell prey to heroin, while "St. Louise" is an ode to fallen Twenties film star Louise Brooks. "She led a loveless life, basically," Doughty explains. "I admire her not so much for her work as for her weird story of a loss of potential and all the things she sacrificed in her life."

Perhaps surprisingly, Doughty's goals for both El Oso and Soul Coughing go far beyond cult-hero status. In fact, they touch upon -- gasp -- the mainstream. "The pipeline that forces pop music down into the mainstream is not terribly complex," he says. "So, it's like, 'Okay you can be art guy and beatnik guy and bongo-playing freak noise guy, or you can pick something blander.' So, at least in explaining things, you pick the blander, so whatever kind of darkness can get into where it's supposed to get and do the work it's supposed to do." When reminded that his eccentric-poet persona has led fans to view him as an exemplar of indie morality, Doughty mutters, "I don't know. Indie is its own pose in a way."

He also thumbs his nose at the resurrected-Beat image that's been pinned on him. The comparison did not create itself, however -- he has all the symptoms. What does he actually think of Kerouac? "I read On the Road when I was fourteen, like everyone else did," he sighs. Ginsberg? "He's got some good stuff." Burroughs? "You know, I can take those drugs, too."

LIZA GHORBANI