Four years after closing the book on Guadalcanal Diary, former frontman Murray Attaway launches his solo career with In Thrall, an arresting album that finds him confronting his demons without hiding behind the sadistic rednecks, droning drunks, mall-crawling suburbanites and all-purpose oddballs who populated his earlier songs.

"I have walked between the lines for years and I am ready to confess/Crawl into the looking glass and put my hand into the viper's nest," the Marietta, Georgia, singer/songwriter declares, a signal that despite its autobiographical tone, In Thrall is no stroll down memory lane. The lone Kodak moment is an embarrassing photograph of a pie-eyed Attaway ("Great God almighty, is this really me?/Looks like bad Fellini") that triggers "Fall So Far," a rollicking, remorseful litany of his alcohol-fueled rampages.

It's not a pretty picture, but then Attaway sees things a lot more clearly these days. A brooding cynic with a biting wit, he favors menacing but melodic songs that deftly draw from rock, country and folk – and that often used to get compared to R.E.M.'s. Attaway addresses that curse on the uplifting "No Tears Tonight," punctuating his promise to "live today and let the past go free" with a ringing Rickenbacker lick that serves as a feisty kiss-off to the "jangling" pigeonhole in which Guadalcanal Diary got stuck. Producer Tony Berg (Michael Penn, Robert Plant) surrounds Attaway's yearning tenor and guitar-based arrangements with cellos, mandolins, headphone-geared sound effects and cheesy keyboards that create haunting atmospheres.

Most of In Thrall follows Attaway as he comes to terms with the fears and frustrations that consume lives – grief ("August Rain"), betrayal ("Walpurgis Night") and insignificance ("Allegory"). Still prominent is spiritual uncertainty, the linchpin of his music ever since Guadalcanal's 1984 debut, Walking in the Shadow of the Big Man. On "Angels in the Trees," featuring harmonies by Jackson Browne, Attaway doesn't doubt the existence of God so much as ponder the futility of wasting a lifetime worrying about it, while on the chilling "August Rain" – about his father's death – he faces the fact that troubles surface no matter how you behave or how much you believe.

Attaway isn't talking about losing his religion: In Thrall is about finding your place in the world and learning to fit into it. (RS 662)

DAVID OKAMOTO