With a lone piano, muted strings or abstract jazz guitar, these San Franciscans achieve a beauty rare, disturbing and resonant. Their landscape is one Tim Hardin, Nick Drake and Tim Buckley sketched – an emotional plane charged with ambivalent, hurt grace. Chief Painter Mark Kozelek is, without embarrassment, a poet – he phrases his words with care and ingenuity – and he's capable both of the indelible image ("The wetness of your eyes/Against the sun that clouds blind") and the startling truth ("All the love in an instant makes my life stop/But then my hate for you makes my feelings/Altogether/Drop"). Arresting candor characterizes his love songs; he conveys feeling in full, keeping the roses and thorns inseparable. (RS 708)

PAUL EVANS