[02.03] Michael Gira is about as unlikely a suspect to make a pop record as there is. So it should come as no surprise that the former voice of the Swans has taken a skewed approach to his foray into pastoral tunes, Everything is Good Here/Please Come Home.

Working under the moniker Angels of Light, Gira delivers 11 songs ranging from dark to delicate. But while each tune is a million light years from the sludgy megatonnage that defined the Swans, the same dark moods that permeated that band's work creeps in at the edges here.

Everything is Good… gets off to a predictably confounding start. Gira's voice, which helped propel the Swans through a pained holler and growl, seems ill at ease and out of place amid the gentle, arranged framework of "Palisades" and the plodding "All Souls' Rising." Indeed, Gira and his background singers come off as cast members in a modern American Gothic theatre musical. And the songs produce a similar, uncomfortable effect to that achieved by the immediacy of confrontational theatre or 30 minutes too many in a traffic jam. But just three songs into the record, on "Kosinski," Gira finds his stride. Oddly evocative of the Psychedelic Furs and post-Crosby Byrds, "Kosinski" sets the mood for several intimate ballads and folkish strums that follow. Gira's voice is unexpectedly relaxed and confident on the ominous "Nations," the hazy, meandering "What Will Come" and the downright tender "What You Were." And he uses this intimacy to spooky advantage on "Wedding Song," which cleverly evokes the dreaminess of dread that usually accompanies the ritual.

Gira also surprises with his whimsical, but crafty arrangements. On "Sunset Park," Gira frames a simple repeated lyric: "She brings some, sheçll bring some" in a shimmering, West Coast psychedelic veneer that seems to promise a stony, carefree Saturday afternoon. "The Family God" peeks out alternatingly from behind string, piano and pedal steel lines to reveal a mundane tale of biding time.

Gira once stated that he sought to highlight all that was blunt and un-intellectual in his work with the Swans. But Everything is Good… is both intricate and involving. As with any Gira work, there is plenty of malignancy lurking in the corners. But it's the sunshine, however tarnished, throughout the album that make this record such an interesting departure. —Charles Saufley