Like Hank Williams and Woody Guthrie, Townes Van Zandt is most at home chronicling the pain of the down and out and wrestling with the extremes of human emotion. A self-confessed rambler and loner – and one of the greatest songwriters of his generation – Van Zandt is a nonstarter in the American art of self-promotion. No Deeper Blue scans like a collection of short stories about life on the margins of the American dream. The dice on the cover are rolling snake eyes and the weariness rattles through the lines of "A Song For" as the album begins, then resonates again in the closing "Gone Too Long." In between, Van Zandt deftly charts a gamut of feelings from the numbed acceptance of love lost in "Niles River Blues" to the simple joys of "Lover's Lullaby" and "Katie Belle Blue."

The focal points of the album are two surreal tales that grapple with death, morality and salvation. Billy makes a deal with death in the form of a skeleton in "Billy, Boney and Ma." The two follow a life of crime until Ma, an intended victim, turns the tables on them through an act of kindness.

In "The Hole," a parable reminiscent of Bob Dylan's "The Ballad of Frankie Lee and Judas Priest," the narrator travels to the underworld, where he is trapped and forsaken by "the gods of men, fame and fortune" but returns to the world of the living by embracing the God of Love.

Though Van Zandt's characters are downtrodden, they're never totally defeated, for they always have the freedom of the road. "I got a guitar all my own, I got a quarter for the telephone," he sings in "Blazes Blue." "I ain't headed down this highway all alone." The railroad carries the singer to anticipated happiness in "Goin' Down to Memphis," flies by with seductive promise in "Cowboy Junkies Lament" and whisks him far from trouble in "BW Railroad Blues." Fidelity to the notion that freedom of movement allows the human spirit to transcend life's horrors radiates through Van Zandt's songs. The fired railroad man in love with "Marie" lives with her under a bridge until the winter cold kills her and their unborn child; he flees his grief by hopping a freight train south.

Slap a cowboy hat on your head and rhyme about General Motors products and you can call yourself a songwriter. But unless you've used both ends of a round-trip ticket to hell, you'll never be in the same league as Townes Van Zandt. (RS 704)

JOHN SWENSON