West.

R.E.M. guitarist Peter Buck must have a thing for sensitive guys. While taking a break from his work with noted tortured soul Michael Stipe, Buck met up with San Francisco tunesmith Mark Eitzel and went on a three-day songwriting binge. After the pair spewed out an album's worth of tunes, Buck continued the collaboration, agreeing to produce and play on the album of his highly regarded buddy (who declined to be interviewed by The Advocate).

Eitzel's odes to drunks the depressives tend to favor poetry over propulsion, and the result has often relied on the listener's eagerness to identify with the losers celebrated in the lyrics. But here the music is so strong that the songs no longer seem word-heavy. The folk-rock-meets-lounge-music arrangements are full of subtle sophistication, and the marriage of maestro Buck with mad Eitzel benefits both musically.

As longtime fans of the cult hero might expect, the result is the most accessible work yet from the former singer of the American Music Club. With instrumental assistance provided by members of Screaming Trees, Los Lobos, and Pearl Jam, West sounds like latter-day R.E.M.--moody, mature, and mannered but without the desperation. Only when Eitzel whines "No one cares if I live or die" does his drama go off the deep end.