's fourth album starts with a sequel to the track that concluded , his third, though it's more like an alternate version, a groggier re-reading that evokes twilight desolation. It clears the way for a set of songs that is a bit different from the one that preceded it. While skulks in noirish corridors with enough style and simmering tension to inspire screenplays, its songs with vocals have a glimmer and gentle sense of uplift with an effect that is ultimately conciliatory. The best of the latter is "In the Woods," crawling out of rain-soaked street as decaying industrial hip-hop before transforming into a plangent daydream about off-the-grid living with violins, handclaps, and 's multi-tracked fragile vocals making an oddly soothing combination. The leaner interludes -- such as "Past Only," containing a segment that's something like a warped demo for a potentially brilliant mid-'80s R&B ballad -- are tantalizingly short, but they keep this succinct and often gripping LP moving. ~ Andy Kellman