Elvis Perkins in Dearland

"We were happy once, you and me, when we were sad," sings Elvis Perkins in "123 Goodbye," the next-to-last song on the upstate New York singer-songwriter's sophomore album. (Unlike 2007's blog-buzzed Ash Wednesday, Elvis Perkins in Dearland is credited to Perkins's oddly named band.) As that line suggests, happiness and sadness aren't exactly opposites in these carefully considered folk-rock tunes, which find a kind of comfort in mulling over such grim topics as suicide and the coming apocalypse. (Perkins isn't letting the latter bother him, he announces in "Doomsday.") You don't have to make it through all six minutes of "Send My Fond Regards to Lonelyville" to know that this dude probably wouldn't mind a trip back there.

Compared with Ash Wednesday, Perkins does a better job here of making his melancholy uplifting for the rest of us, an improvement for which he can thank his bandmates, who earn their above-the-title billing. They motor "I Heard Your Voice in Dresden" with a peppy '60s-pop groove and slather "I'll Be Arriving" with grimy psych-garage organ ooze; Becky Stark of L.A.'s Lavender Diamond lends airy backing vocals to "Hey." Perkins keeps a couple of numbers stripped down to their coffeeshop essentials, but they're the album's least memorable. His finely shaded emotionalism benefits from a similarly nuanced setting.—Mikael Wood

Elvis Perkins in Dearland plays Bowery Ballroom Wed 25.

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