I’ve been a fan of Jesse Lortz since his days making music as one-half of The Dutchess and The Duke. And while Lortz’s musical history goes back before then — the man has an abundance of garage-rock work under his belt — his stark tales of hard living rarely fail to resonate.

Recently, his second album as Case Studies, This Is Another Life, was released by Sacred Bones. Unlike Case Studies’ debut, which followed the template laid down in Lortz’s The Dutchess and the Duke songwriting, this one finds his style expanding somewhat; there’s a Jason Molina-esque feel to some of these songs, which is never a bad thing.

And, in a move that’s not surprising for someone who’s attuned to his literary side, one of the songs on This is Another Life takes its inspiration from Richard Brautigan. It’s a quiet stomp, it’s neatly infectious, and it might well prompt you to catch up on your backlog of surrealist fiction.

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