Alex McMurray’s long awaited new album, How to Be a Cannonball, could be the record that gives him the recognition as being one of the best songwriters working today. Every week there is some new hype about some two-bit indie rocker kid from Laurel Canyon, Hyde Park, or Alphabet City whose songs are “compelling,” “cinematic,” or “haunting.” Ninety-nine percent of them can’t touch McMurray’s music, honed by years of Wednesday night solo shows at the Circle Bar and gigs of every description at every bar and music club in town. How to Be a Cannonball shows a songwriter and musician working at the top of his craft with a sympathetic band that can follow his every whim.

McMurray writes tales of folks who live slightly off-center. Some are freaks. Some are just a little insane. Some are simply characters with strong opinions, and McMurray uses a variety of voices and arrangements to illustrate their stories. There are rockers, ballads, and cabaret tunes, all of which have stick-in-your-head melodies. Whether softly singing an ode to Ernie and Antoinette K-Doe or ranting about Captain Sandy, McMurray’s lovely voice and tone allow him to inhabit his characters without turning them into caricatures. His ear for detail lets him portray his subjects in unique ways, whether he’s warning listeners in the mutant cha-cha of “The Barber of Shibuya” who “has a razor for a hand,” or updating his character Otis, who has now escaped from the asylum and is hiding out under a sink. In his latest anthem for New Orleans, “You Got to be Crazy to Live in This Town,” McMurray ventures into Randy Newman territory as he sings about the state of his living. He never speaks directly about Katrina or the federal flood, but he does detail that the stopped clocks are “somewhere on the neutral ground between here and Thibodeaux” and that gravity “is crying up in the attic where we done hid.” It’s a rueful lament with Bob Andrews’ whirling organ adding to the proud-in-defeat tone.

How to Be a Cannonball is not about New Orleans, but it could not happen any place else. The characters and incidents can exist or happen other places, but they happen here more frequently than other places. In some ways, McMurray is our poet/songwriter playing about our lives in New Orleans, and he gives his songs a truthfulness and authenticity that songwriters in other places can’t touch.