Lera Lynn walks 'The Avenues' of love

The murky shades of sienna, tans, and browns that adorn the cover and insert of singer/songwriter Lera Lynn's recently released sophomore album, The Avenues, dreamily reflect the impossible-to-pigeonhole music she makes. The sweet yet sultry combination of roots country, jazzy folk, and pop tinted with a healthy dose of atmospheric noir won't appeal to listeners of contemporary country radio. But artists such as Patsy Cline, Chris Isaak, Cowboy Junkies, and k.d. lang, all of whom share a common style with Lynn, typically appeal to those who reside in the darker fringes of Americana because that's where the essence of heartache lives.

So it comes as little shock that Lynn's second album is self-released. No major label would touch this moody, often hypnotic, melancholy music with dejected/angry lyrics such as "please leave me be/I hate your sad song and really I am coming down." The Avenues is less twangy, more consistent, and edgier than her 2011 debut, Have You Met Lera Lynn?. She has also found in Joshua Grange (k.d. lang, Conor Oberst) a producer who understands that her lost, unrequited, and love-gone-sour songs work their magic and mystery most effectively in stripped-down, haunting arrangements.

Beyond the crying pedal steel, primal dusky drums, and stark upright bass are Lynn's evocative songs and expressive vocals. They telegraph loneliness and painful remnants of love in titles like "I'm Your Fool," "Out to Sea," and "Empty Pages." But it's her distinctive voice — husky and cooing, sexy and feisty, smooth and classy — that brings these personal stories to life. They reverberate with the gravity of someone who has lived these unhappy dramas and finds a sort of catharsis in revealing her past to strangers who might have survived similar heartbreak. She takes her time on these 11 original ballads, floating along with memorable melodies that crawl, slither, and often soar. Lynn gracefully weaves between the instruments, lingering on words like "I would die in your arms/you wouldn't be alarmed" without a hint of self-pity, let alone melodramatic cliché. She says that selections such as "Letters," "Comin' Down," and "Leave It Up to Me" reflect on her often tense relationship with an alcoholic father, although the words are oblique enough to refer to other troubling situations. Consider her the country cousin to Lana Del Rey's David Lynchian ice princess; she's not quite as emotionally scarred yet evokes the same shades of downbeat cool with reverbed guitars, the occasional accordion and mandolin, and songs that float in a timeless ether.

The former Athens resident, originally from Houston, now based in Nashville, recorded these tracks at Grange's studio in Los Angeles. That geographical diversity makes it even harder to pin down her vibe since some of all those locations thread through her music. But despite, or more likely because of her idiosyncratic flair, there is a continuity to these songs and her unique multigenre approach. It's no surprise that she scored a YouTube hit with her cover of Bruce Springsteen's "Fire." The sexual heat in those lyrics pulses with a similar erotic energy that fuels Lynn's spirit and makes The Avenues such a sweltering success.