I don't know what Austin-based singer-songwriter Terry Klein had in mind when he wrote "Well Enough Alone," but I'm going to take a guess: "On the Banks of the Ohio." "Banks" may be the most famous song in the venerable tradition of American murder ballads, possibly because it lays claim to a melody it's impossible to resist. It even feels, God help us, sort of quietly moving. Yet beneath that placid surface a horror story, about a young man who cold-bloodedly stabs his fiancee to death and dumps her body into the river, plays out. Worse, the narrator is the murderer, and he sings -- as the listener eventually comes to realize -- in the flat-toned, matter-of-fact voice of a psychopath. The culture critic Greil Marcus even figured out his day job: otherwise-invisible bookkeeper in a small-town business. If you know the song, you'll know what he means.

"Well Enough Alone" boasts an oldtimey-sounding ballad tune, underscored by the Southern mountain fiddle (courtesy of the ubiquitous Tammy Rogers) that accompanies it. It, like "Banks," is related in the flat-toned, matter-of-fact voice of a psychopath. We don't have to speculate about his day job, which is professional killer. It's as graphic as a gruesome crime thriller. It is set to a terrific folkish melody.

As my years pile up, I grow ever less tolerant of art that depends upon violent imagery. Broadly speaking, I figure that if I feel the need for voyeuristic violence, there is always the news. I have listened to "Well Enough Alone" twice, and the second of these will probably be the last time. Even so, I can still listen to "Banks" with pleasure.

Possibly the difference is that "Banks" came into my ear a long time ago on an early Joan Baez album, and I've been exposed to countless other readings since. In short, I'm used to it. In fairness, the Klein murder ballad is an example of masterly song craft. It's just that it demands too much of this particular listener. You will, of course, decide for yourself should the song enter your life.

I praised Klein's last album, Good Luck, Take Care, when I reviewed it in this space on 19 February 2022. Leave the Light On is just about as satisfying. His influences, I infer, are traditional and modern folk music as well as fellow Texans Townes Van Zandt and Guy Clark. Van Zandt and Clark, both geniuses in their way, are gone from us, but Klein, we hope, will be standing in for a long time to come. Not that he sounds like a clone of either, understand, but he shares their particular sensibility, emotional precision, piercing observation and storytelling skill. He also writes riveting tunes.

Strikingly, he composes no filler. If he does that in his private moments, it doesn't make the cut and probably lies at the bottom of a river somewhere. Because they're deep and subtle, his songs also repay repeated listening as one discovers truths uncaught at earlier hearing. At the moment I am particularly enamored of "Blue Hill Bay," a contemporary maritime ballad, and "That Used to be My Train," written around a literate, original metaphor. As he did last time, the very smart and keen-eared Thomm Jutz, musician and scholar of Appalachian music, produces.

In short, Klein is not just another boring singer-songwriter. If there is honor left in that much-abused profession, he personifies it.