John Darnielle is a classics student, former mental hospital nurse and savvy music blogger. He’s also one of the best songwriters of the ‘00s, having turned out mostly acoustic, remarkably consistent albums full of funny, heartrending songs about failed marriages and speed freaks and liquor store employees shooting burglars in the face. (Do yourself a favor, check out “Tallahassee“.) Get Lonely is Darnielle’s most elegant and least character-oriented record yet, outfitting sad ballads and lonesome monologues with restrained patter, sharp melodies and details both dead-on expressive and, howyousay?, literary, e.g. “I wandered through the house like a little boy lost at the mall / And an astronaut could have seen the hunger in my eyes from space.” It’s sometimes too somber, but Darnielle’s words and singing – tender and slightly nasal, colloquial and commanding – lift cuts like “Half Dead” and the fantastic “If You See Light” above mere prettiness. Get Lonely is out August 22.