It's almost inconceivable that an artist like Townes Van Zandt can still be found. He's an extraordinary songwriter and guitarist, and he's equipped with a fine, haunting country moan of a voice. But what makes him remarkable is that he's not a careerist. He's a throwback to the days of Leadbelly and Woody Guthrie, to people who sang and wrote songs as a part of their lives, rather than with an eye to the Billboard charts.

Van Zandt has been playing coffeehouses and juke joints and making albums (nine or ten – he's lost count) for twenty years, and while his songs have been recorded by Emmylou Harris and Willie Nelson, he's definitely not a household name. But his latest album could change that. At My Window demonstrates his writing and singing abilities at their finest.

The songs on At My Window are mostly melancholy songs about the impermanence of love. It's hard to say something fresh and arresting on this well-worn theme, but Van Zandt succeeds. His language and perspective skirt cliché and move the songs into the realm of genuine feeling. "The Catfish Song" and "Buckskin Stallion Blues," both drenched in sadness and strength, are exceptional. "For the Sake of the Song" is sophisticated and complicated: though the singer argues back at the accusations his lover levels at him when he tells her he's leaving, he ends each chorus with "Maybe she just has to sing for the sake of the song/Who do I think that I am to decide that she's wrong?" The twist turns anger into something like acceptance.

Perhaps the best song on the album is the title cut, in which Van Zandt offers his idea of love as something that exists in the contentment of the moment and is never guaranteed to last beyond that: "Living is laughing, dying says nothing at all/Babe and I lie in here, watching the evening fall."

Little snatches of lyric don't do the man justice. Van Zandt's songs are intricate. They demand – and reward – attention. His Texas-accented voice is perfectly bittersweet, and the simple musical accompaniment holds the songs like a cradle. At My Window doesn't offer just songs; it offers landscapes – of hills, of the road and of the heart. (RS 514)

JAMIE MALANOWSKI